{"id":27153,"date":"2024-07-22T16:30:04","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T15:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=27153"},"modified":"2024-07-22T15:45:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T14:45:23","slug":"inventions-for-echo-guitars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2024\/07\/22\/inventions-for-echo-guitars\/","title":{"rendered":"Inventions for echo guitars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"echoes.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I thought about calling this one A Young Person’s Guide to Echo Guitar but that would only end up attracting people expecting a tutorial of some kind. It’s not really a guide either, more an overview of a musical idiom whose predominant feature is guitar played through analogue or digital echo machines, often without additional instrumentation. I have a predilection for this kind of thing, something I was thinking about recently when listening to Michael Brook’s Cobalt Blue<\/em> album.<\/p>\n

\"copicat.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Watkins Copicat as seen (and used) in Berberian Sound Studio.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is also another example of technology inspiring the development of new forms of music. Echoed guitar dates back to the early days of rock’n’roll but it was the advent of echo machines like the Watkins Copicat<\/a> that made it possible for guitarists to produce rich clusters of sound without any other instrumentation. The Copicat was portable and could be activated with a foot pedal, making it perfect for guitar players. These machines aren’t always credited in album notes but I’d guess that one or two of the earlier recordings on this list have been made using Copicats. (John Martyn, however, preferred an Echoplex.) As for the more recent examples, one reason to write this piece is to fish for suggestions of things I may have missed. I’m sure I put a Bandcamp discovery in one of the weekend lists that involved quantities of echo guitar but I’m going to have to trawl back through old posts to find it.<\/p>\n

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Echo<\/em> (1972) by Achim Reichel and Machines<\/strong><\/p>\n

Achim Reichel is an odd character in German music. In the 1960s he was a singer and guitarist in a popular Beatles-like band, The Rattles, followed by a stint with a short-lived psychedelic outfit, Wonderland; by the 1980s he was a very successful German pop artist. For a few years in the 1970s, however, he recorded a handful of albums which in later years he seems to have found embarrassing despite their being regarded now as highlights of the so-called Krautrock era. Echo<\/em> is the most adventurous of these, a double album which used to be a frustrating item, being praised by those who heard it while also being very difficult to find. The two discs contain four suites that fill each side, the first one opening with long stretches of echo-guitar which soon establish the mood of the album with their unpredictable evolution. Echo<\/em> as a whole is a succession of unexpected swerves and musical detours, taking in orchestral arrangements, field recordings, snatches of song, heavy rock, and (regrettably) a long stretch of glossolalic jabbering that tests the listener’s patience. I forgive the latter when the rest of the album is so good. The guitar sound that Reichel developed here became a recurrent feature of his music for the next two years, especially in live performances.<\/p>\n

Reichel’s popularity has overshadowed his earlier recordings to an extent that Echo<\/em> wasn’t given an official reissue until 2017 when he relented to persistent requests and put together a 10-disc CD set, The Art Of German Psychedelic 1970\u201374<\/em><\/a>. This is too much Reichel for the casual listener but if you can bear his occasional lurches into Steppenwolf-style psych-rock there’s a great deal of excellent music in the collection. Among the exclusive offerings is a superb live performance of kosmische<\/em> improvisation from 1973, also an entire disc of unaccompanied echo-guitar recordings.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Einladung<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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\"burchette.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Wilburn Burchette Opens The Seven Gates Of Transcendental Consciousness<\/em> (1972)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many of Wilburn Burchette’s albums would be suitable here but I chose this one because I like the title and it has the grooviest cover. Burchette’s subtitle\u2014\u201cA Transcendental Ballet For The Mind Of God\u201d\u2014suggests something more overtly cosmic than the music itself which is less freeform than Achim Reichel. This is also the first self-released album in a list which coincidentally contains several such releases.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Opens the Seven Gates of Transcendental Consciousness<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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\"gottsching.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Inventions For Electric Guitar<\/em> (1974) by Ash Ra Tempel\/Manuel G\u00f6ttsching<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cult album time. This one was labeled as the sixth release by Ash Ra Tempel but it’s really the first solo album by Manuel G\u00f6ttsching, in which he used multi-track recording together with copious echo and other effects to create something that sounds more like the synthesizer music of 1974 than anything made with guitars. The cover art fixes the album in a specific time but the music itself is timeless. In 2010 he performed the album in its entirety at a Japanese music festival, assisted by three other guitarists: Steve Hillage, Elliott Sharp and Zhang Shouwang. If there’s a complete video of this concert I’ve yet to see it but there is this extract<\/a> showing the musicians playing Pluralis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Echo Waves<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Samtvogel<\/em> (1974) by Gunter Schickert<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second self-released album on the list, and Gunter Schickert’s musical debut. I’m not keen on Schickert’s songs but the second side of Samtvogel<\/em> (Velvet Bird<\/em>) is filled by 21 minutes of echo-guitar.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Wald<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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\"martyn.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Live At Leeds<\/em> (1975) by John Martyn<\/strong><\/p>\n

The third self-released album is on the list for the 18-minute version of Outside In<\/em>, originally a shorter piece on Martyn’s Inside Out<\/em> album which he often played live in much longer versions. I don’t know when Martyn started playing his guitar through an Echoplex but his technique was well-established by 1973, which puts him in the vanguard of the form. He’s also unusual in favouring an acoustic guitar with a pickup connected to his effects units. I was first made aware of this in 1981 via an astonishing performance of Outside In<\/em> on the BBC’s A Little Night Music<\/em>. Until then I’d not heard much of his music at all, and always assumed he was a rather typical folk\/blues artist, not someone who did things like this. A few weeks ago I was very pleased to find a compilation of Martyn’s early BBC appearances which includes the 1981 Outside In<\/em> performance<\/a>. And if you zip to the beginning of the video you can also see him playing Skip James’ I’d Rather Be The Devil<\/em> in his own echo-inflected manner.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Outside In (live)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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\"brook.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Cobalt Blue\/Live At The Aquarium<\/em> (1992) by Michael Brook<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Brook makes the list with two separate albums, Live At The Aquarium<\/em> being a performance of Cobalt Blue<\/em> which was given a limited release shortly after the studio album. (Both albums were later reissued as a double-disc set.) Brook is often credited with playing “Infinite Guitar” but this is a form of endless sustain, not an echo effect.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Ten<\/em><\/a>
\n\u2022 Ultramarine (live)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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\"hillage.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Golden Vibe<\/em> (2019) by Steve Hillage<\/strong><\/p>\n

Released in 2019 but actually recorded in 1973, this isn’t really an album as such, more a collection of sketches for future compositions. Hillage recorded the music while still in Gong but the pieces all look forward to the solo albums he was recording a few years later, with early try-outs for The Dervish Riff<\/em>, Leylines To Glassdom<\/em> and The Golden Vibe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Golden Vibe<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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\"tarotplane.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Improvisations For Echo Guitar<\/em> (2023) by Tarotplane<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most recent example to date…or is it? I’m sure there’s more to be found at Bandcamp, for example, but the search options there need serious improvement.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Improvisations For Echo Guitar<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Fender guitar catalogue, 1976<\/a>
\n\u2022 Manuel G\u00f6ttsching, 1952\u20132022<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought about calling this one A Young Person’s Guide to Echo Guitar but that would only end up attracting people expecting a tutorial of some kind. It’s not really a guide either, more an overview of a musical idiom whose predominant feature is guitar played through analogue or digital echo machines, often without additional … Continue reading “Inventions for echo guitars”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[5513,13576,4660,13577,168,4682,5555,4006,8020,5511],"class_list":["post-27153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-achim-reichel","tag-achim-reichel-and-machines","tag-ash-ra-tempel","tag-gunter-schickert","tag-john-martyn","tag-manuel-gottsching","tag-michael-brook","tag-steve-hillage","tag-tarotplane","tag-wilburn-burchette"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-73X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}