Viewed from one angle, Manuel Göttsching’s timeless masterpiece ‘E2-E4’ appears to be electronic music’s ‘Waiting for Godot’. Across its mesmeric 58 minutes, nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes… What it’s not is awful. Simply based around two chords, Göttsching weaved a magical, hypnotic spell that has enchanted DJs and producers – including Larry Levan, Carl Craig, James Murphy and latterly Alex Kassian – since its release in 1984. Ben Cardew seeks to unravel the track’s enduring mystery and hears that it was “a sort of initiation of techno in an ambient way”…

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Does perfection exist in electronic music? If so, it probably sounds like ‘E2-E4’: 58 minutes of peerless electronic flight from Ash Ra Tempel guitarist Manuel Göttsching, recorded in 1981 and released three years later, becoming an improbable New York disco classic, an ambient landmark and even a house hit.

Simply put, is there anything you could improve in ‘E2-E4’? Any way you could make its 58 sublime minutes of majestic melody and subtle rhythmic pulses any warmer, more welcoming or more ecstatic? The song’s fans include Larry Levan, the legendary Paradise Garage DJ who apparently wanted ‘E2-E4’ played at his funeral; Richard Branson, who claimed Göttsching could “make a fortune” with the record; Carl Craig, who remade ‘E2-E4’ in the 90s; Scott Grooves, who recorded a live band cover in 2018; and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, who borrowed the record’s artwork, to Göttsching’s evident displeasure.

Even Göttsching himself, who died in December 2022, seemed to realise he had hit upon something special. Talking of ‘E2-E4’’s recording, which took place in one studio session, to Red Bull Music Academy in 2018, he explained: “I didn’t change anything afterwards. I didn’t do any overdubs. I didn’t do any edits. I didn’t change anything, not even equalising or something like that. I just left it as it was. I was a bit surprised, actually, when I finished and then I said: ‘Oops. What was this?’ I listened to it and thought: ‘This is quite perfect.’”

Perfect. Yes. But also deeply strange: ‘E2-E4’ is all things to all men, an infinite variety hidden within the song’s almost comically limited two-chord base. For a long time ‘E2-E4’, made by a German producer in midwinter, was best known as the basis for ‘Sueño Latino’, a Mediterranean dream of a summer house hit, made by a quartet of Italian producers under the same name. For New York clubbers in the 80s, ‘E2-E4’ was an underground disco anthem, despite having little recognisable beat. For British ravers in the late-80s, ‘E2-E4’ was a chill out classic, as spun by The Orb’s Alex Paterson and the KLF’s Jimmy Cauty, mixing in sound effects and field recordings as the record weaved its endless web.

Carl Craig, who remade ‘E2-E4’ as Paperclip People’s ‘Remake’ in 1994, first came across the song in 1988, when Alton Miller played it at the Music Institute in Detroit. “When I heard it, I thought that it was incredible, it just really blew my mind, the possibilities of what it was doing, that it felt like a dance track, but it wasn’t, you know, hard,” he says.

The record’s latest admirer is Alex Kassian, a producer, DJ and artist from Kyoto, now based in Berlin, who recently re-worked ‘E2-E4’ as ‘E2–E4 - A Reference to E2–E4 By Manuel Göttsching’, throwing in a dubbed-out house remix by UK reggae legend Mad Professor on the B-side for good measure.

“I think ‘E2-E4’ is somehow in everyone’s DNA who’s involved in the realm of dance music, as a DJ, producer, promoter, label manager or simply music collector,” Kassian says. “It’s one of those releases that has helped electronic music develop into many different forms that we get to experience today. From Paradise Garage to Panorama Bar and most venues that existed in our time. Is there a more important record in the history of dance music?” 

And yet ‘E2-E4’ came from extremely humble roots. Göttsching was the guitar player in Krautrock mainstays Ash Ra Tempel – a band once compared to the “James Brown band on acid” - from 1971 until the group split in 1976. He made his solo debut in 1975 with ‘Inventions for Electric Guitar’, an album initially subtitled ‘Ash Ra Tempel VI’ such was its closeness to the day job.

Soon, though, Göttsching’s tastes started to change. “The next step after ‘Inventions’ was that I didn’t want guitar sounds – I always want something new,” Göttsching told RBMA. “I do [something] only once and when I’m happy with it, I don’t want to repeat it. I started composing for keyboards and that was my next solo album, ‘New Age of Earth’ [credited initially to Ash Ra Tempel on release in 1976, later changed to Ashra] which gave me a worldwide contract with Virgin Records in England.”

This was the environment that led to the creation of ‘E2-E4’. Göttsching, so the story goes, had just returned from a tour with his fellow Ash Ra Tempel graduate Klaus Schulze and was feeling in a creative mood. And so, on the evening of 12 December 1981, Göttsching headed to his Berlin home studio for a private concert, making music just for himself, which would also give him something to listen to during a flight he was due to take to Hamburg the following day.

“I wanted to play and so I did it in the same way I did many sessions in my studio before; I had many recordings of 30 minutes,” Göttsching told RBMA. “Sometimes, it’s only ten minutes and something was happening and I stopped it. This one just worked for one hour.” (Carl Craig says that he was told ‘E2-E4’ was written as part of a series of compositions for German public radio, although there’s nothing to verify this.)

Perhaps this incredibly casual approach explains ‘E2-E4’’s almost offhand genius. To a casual listener it might sound as if nothing really changes in its 58 glorious minutes. But underlying this drift is a flurry of subtle activity. You can pick any two-minute section of ‘E2-E4’ and it won’t be dramatically different to the next. But it will be distinct. Perhaps the most obvious development is the sprawling, cosmic and perfectly judged guitar solo that plays over the second half of the record. But there are also subtle electronic currents that surface, little pings, echoes and effects, a synth part that pokes its head up for a few minutes, like it was always there, just resting.

The record is also home to some incredibly intricate rhythmical tricks. “If I try to go to sleep listening to the track, I can’t, because there’s maybe two or three different time signatures happening at the same time,” says Craig. “There’s all these counter-rhythms that are happening, because it’s not just straight four/four. And, of course, the build-up of the track, it goes from being piano, but it never gets to be in fortissimo.”

Kassian thinks that ‘E2-E4’ might reflect Göttsching’s life in late-1981. “People who write melodies often write a reflection of what they’re living through at that point in their life and it makes me wonder about all of that,” he says, “I was recently in touch with his girlfriend at the time called Rosie and she had told me she was in the room when he recorded ‘E2-E4’ at their studio, called ‘Studio ROMA’ (from two first letters of their first names). Personally, I get the feeling that he was thriving in total freedom and flourishing with creativity from this record.” 

Göttsching knew he had made something special. But despite label boss Richard Branson’s warm welcome, ‘E2-E4’ remained unreleased until 1984, when it came out on Klaus Schulze’s InTeam label. The delay was, at least in part, a technical one. “At this time, all major album releases still took place on vinyl,” Göttsching explained to 15 Questions. “20 minutes per side were considered the limit and pressing plants and labels would routinely reject a work if it exceeded that – or accept it with reluctance only because it compromised dynamics. Clearly, these were not exactly the best preconditions for 60 minutes of ‘E2-E4’.”

Initially, ‘E2-E4’ had a cold welcome from critics. “The first German critique called it complete ‘muzak’ and said that I’d missed every development in electronic music and I didn’t know anything,” Göttsching told The Guardian in 2013.

Luckily, the song had other supporters, notably Larry Levan, the totemic New York DJ who was resident at the Paradise Garage from 1977 to 1987. (On Göttsching’s own website, he describes Levan as “the one who made Manuel’s ‘E2-E4’ famous all over the world”.) Levan was known for his outré music choices and fierce determination to break tracks, even if they initially cleared the floor. He was also, according to Justin Strauss, a New York DJ, remixer and producer since the early 1980s, “the major DJ of New York”. So, as Strauss said in 2023, where Levan went, other DJs would follow.

Craig says legendary Chicago DJ Ron Hardy regularly played ‘E2-E4’, while in Detroit Derrick May and Alton Miller were notable fans. By the time Sueño Latino came knocking on Göttsching’s door in the late-1980s, the album was a cult hit among the electronic world. “When I found out ‘E2-E4’ was played in clubs, I couldn’t imagine people dancing to it,” Göttsching told The Guardian. “There’s not a strong bass drum and the rhythm is very subtle. I took ideas from dance music but my composing goes more into the minimalist style of Steve Reich, Philip Glass. It could be played with an orchestra.”

To RBMA Göttsching spoke of ‘E2-E4’’s “floating” feeling – and it is perhaps this very fluidity that makes the music so adaptable, with the song’s impact like being tumbled in a cosmic spin cycle, the two underlying chords providing the suggestion of an anchor.

“The essence of the loop is integral to any piece of dance music. If you can listen to a loop for 30 minutes without getting bored, then you might be sitting on a decent idea,” says Kassian. “The power of switching great chords opens up a world of possibilities melodically. And even for those who aren’t super inclined in melody, it becomes such an easy loop to work with.” 

Craig says that ‘E2-E4’ helped teach producers in New York, Chicago and Detroit how to stretch out an idea. “Taking this theme and stretching it out in a dance world happened with James Brown. So, when James would have Part One and Part Two on a track or on a seven-inch single, it might be a seven-minute track and he splits it up into two pieces. And ‘E2-E4’ kind of did that,” he says. 

But Craig believes the lineage of ‘E2-E4’ stretches back even further. “It goes back to even music that’s centuries old,” Craig says. “It’s just that with using electronics, you’re able to do things with the texture of the sound that keeps it interesting, in comparison to the symphony, where it seems that, at the time, for the music to work, that if it was too repetitive, people would probably get bored and start throwing shit at you.”

Kassian says he wasn’t intimidated by the prospect of covering such an iconic work of electronic music. “Maybe because I didn’t write it with the intention of releasing it,” he explains. “It was more of a way to personally honour Manuel Göttsching for giving us those two holy chords and all the other countless beautiful pieces he wrote. It was just a small love letter to say thank you to him.”

In fact, he describes Göttsching’s work as “inviting” rather than intimidating. “Did you ever imagine what a jazz pianist would do with the two chords and how they would wonder and come to resolution?” he says. “That’s something I would personally like to hear; for someone to wander off beyond those two chords and explore the infinite possibilities of melodies and then land on the original chords.”

The ongoing, slow-burn success of ‘E2-E4’ – which was re-issued in 2016 to mark its 35th anniversary – would give Göttsching a fame that went beyond Ash Ra Tempel and he continued releasing music and playing gigs up to the end of his life. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a fellow icon of German music, played with Göttsching in Berlin in 2021. “He was pioneering like me within that era of the development of new popular music in Germany,” he says. “‘E2-E4’ was a sort of initiation of techno in an ambient way.”

Listeners have long thought of ‘E2-E4’ as vaguely mysterious: how on earth did this one-take synth experiment by a former Ash Ra Tempel guitarist become a Paradise Garage classic, an ambient landmark and a house hit? It seems so unlikely, on the face of it. 

And yet, perhaps there is no mystery here. Maybe the fact that ‘E2-E4’ was made for no one, means that it was perfect for everyone, a universal moment of musical beauty that will outlast us all. Maybe everyone finds what they want – or perhaps what they need – in the song. A Latino club hit from a German producer? Sure. A New York disco anthem with little recognisable beat? Yeah, why not? Just ask and ‘E2-E4’ will deliver.

“For me it’s about the melodies, the sounds, the playing and the equipment used,” concludes Paul Byrne, who runs Test Pressing, which released Kassian’s ‘E2-E4’ cover. “It’s rumoured (getting geeky) that one machine he used was a Pearl Syncussion synth for all the bleeps and stuff which makes all kinds of metallic pangs and bleeps. Couple that with his guitar playing and the lovely melodies and you’ve really got something special. Then couple that with an iconic sleeve, the chess move title and the piece being 58 minutes long and it’s going down in history.” 

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This article first appeared in issue six of Disco Pogo.