E2E4 - Manuel Gottsching

Roz was still on holiday today (she's back to work tomorrow). We took Maddy to the pictures to see Juno which she's been desperate to see. She enjoyed it, but I suspect we enjoyed it more as she missed a lot of the jokes. Worth a viewing, particularly if you have a daughter. It was a bit unsettling casting Schillinger from Oz as her liberal-ish dad though.

Today's track was released in 1982 and had a major beariing on music for years to come. Despite it's early release it was basically re-worked in 1989 or 90 and released as Sueno Latino by Sueno Latino. That version basically distilled the original down from about an hour to about five minutes. The original is still cracking though. I have the 25th anniversary edition on CD. The good thing is he writes a bit about the background to the track. He'd been in a band and wanted to release his first solo project under his own name. He'd already chosen the name E2E4 as it referenced teh opening gambit in Chess. He had lots of small excerpts and some general themes but hadn't composed the whole thing. Anyway, he got back from tour ans was still in the playing live mood so he switched his gear on and just started messing about. He played for an hour and recorded it for his own perusal later. When he played it back he ended up loving it but couldn't decide whether or not to release it. In the end it was a chat with Richard Branson that convinced it to make it his forst solo release.

I'm glad he did, I'd recommend it as an addition to anyone's CD colloction (it used to be available on vinyl but the original was too long for vinyl so it was released as a double album rather than one fluid piece of music like it was recorded).