Track Listing

1. Sunrain
2. Ocean Of Tenderness
3. Deep Distance
4. Nightdust

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3892 in Music
• Released on: 1990-06-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds

CD Description
One of the great proto-ambient albums. After signing to Virgin, Manuel Gottsching decided to shorten the Ash Ra Tempel appellation to simply Ashra, but this alteration didn't in any way compromise his musical vision.
NEW AGE OF EARTH isa sonic paradise of interlocking, shifting synthesizer websand processed guitars, wrought with a growing intensity that sucks the listener into its cushioned womb. The long titletrack encapsulates the record. Curtains of sound undulate like the motion of windswept oceans, suggesting vivid, organic, rainbow colours. Gottsching is one of the true designers of what might have properly been called trance music, had that category not been usurped by the techno genre. The soundsof NEW AGE OF EARTH transfix the listener. Audio art in allits glory, a sonic painting that reveals deeper imagery with each listen, Gottsching's music is simply sublime.

Customer Reviews

Under-rated classic
New Age of Earth is an often overlooked classic. It is fashionable to rate the early Ashra Tempel albums ahead of this, but to be honest this is a superior work - gone are the wilder experimental pieces and in their place are lengthy mood pieces. The sound is a glistening surface, underlaid with pulsing rhythms similar to mid period Tangerine Dream. Ideal music to carry you away somewhere else. When the guitar finally enters the music on 'Nightdust' it almost brings a tear to the eye.

Dreamy and laid-back
If you like 1970s Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, you'll positively LOVE this mainly guitar-based album which manages to sound like the smooth 70s synthesiser releases from the above. To me, it is evocative of long, carefree summer nights. Even if you didn't ever explore the synth. groups or have these summer memories, this album might convince you that you did!

SUBLIME. Just buy and enjoy!

Manuel Goettsching (Ashra) has composed and played some great, gentle melodic, synth and guitar music with real heart and soul, certainly in later years. Even the heavier stuff has a sense of passion to it.

I remember the night in 1977 when, as part of Queen Elizabeth's Siver Jubilee, all the beacons were once again lit across Great Britain. Our local venue was at Ivinghoe Beacon and, as we waited fifty minutes to exit the car park afterwards, I tuned to the John Peel show on Radio 1 (We owe the late great Mr Peel such a HUGE debt of gratitude). A quite sublime track was played which even my "traditional" Dad quite liked. This track was DEEP DISTANCE from this album. I was hooked on Ashra's music thereafter....

The whole album, especially this aforementioned track, sums up long hot Summer days and evenings, sitting on top of a tall hill (like at Ivinghoe, which has views of several counties) and just letting go into the vibe created just by being there.....

If I was to complile a Top Twenty of favourite tracks/pieces of music over my fifty + years of life (and beyond), I'd find it almost impossible. One of the tracks that would sum up my deep love of seventies synthesiser based music would be Deep Distance, so evocative and beautiful in its own way.