Starring Rosi

Guitarist Manuel Göttsching, with bassist Hartmut Enke and the intermittent Klaus Schulze on drums, founded Ash Ra Tempel in 1971, after purchasing Pink Floyd's sound equipment in London. The trio had previously worked together with Conrad Schnitzler in Eruption. They released four albums of exemplary krautrock, combining blues influences with Jimi Hendrix pyrotechnics in freak out-style playing. The album's side-long tracks were mostly improvisational, and drew some similarity to the early Guru Guru albums. Ash Ra Tempel further collaborated with on-the-lamb acid-guru Timothy Leary for another album, and participated in Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's Cosmic Jokers sessions, from which tapes would be pilfered for a further series of albums. But by 1973, after a farewell concert in February, Schulze and Enke departed. Göttsching continued, now with Rosi Müller and producer Dieter Dierks on bass. It's not surprising then, that Starring Rosi presents a change to the Ash Ra Tempel formula. "Laughter Loving" opens with a "space whisper," yet unfolds to reveal a sprite instrumental that recalls Agitation Free's contemporary work (read: American Southern rock). Gone are the feedback and freak out, and in their place is a clean guitar tone, with journeyman drummer Harald Grosskopf supplying the quick beat. Müller offers some hippie prose as Göttsching strums away on the ensuing "Day-Dream;" while the brief "Cosmic Tango" does just that. The second side's "Interplay of Forces" is another track that features Göttsching's remarkable guitar playing, this time with a conga-enhanced rhythm. Similarly, "Bring Me Up" closes the side, offering another potent rocker—again with a little Latin influence, for good measure. Though the album would be the last (sort of) for Ash Ra Tempel, Göttsching kept busy, plotting his next course of action.