In summary, Ashra, with the main role of the guitar magician Manuel Göttsching, who have been making extraordinary and variable music for more than 30 years, developing from the old days in the post-68's as pioneers of cosmic sound, over early guitar-synthesiser ambient prototypes in the late 70's, rising to exotic and tropical variations, and to the electrical ecstasy of the last productions, have succeeded in combining a spectrum of those experiences in a timeless unique art work in a fantasy-stimulating manner that you can fall in love with and might even get dependent on. Do I need to say that Ashra will surely have been the favorite music of my lifetime?«

Composed largely by Manuel Göttsching, both serve as diverse, hypnotic breaks from the grind of standard progressive. It’s the kind of music that Robert Fripp has made in his best moments, a cross pollination of the dance beat days of Discipline-era Crimson and the mournful but compelling lines that have graced his best soundscape work. But these discs stand on their own, far above and beyond a number of releases that are presented as bold and imaginative works but prove to be only so in the minds of marketing executives. There’s an other-worldly atmosphere here, a kind of laid-back, late-night charm that leaves you in a pleasantly dumbfounded state of mind as the four members of the ensemble (Göttsching, Lutz Ulbrich, Harald Grosskopf and Steve Baltes) weave jazz and prog and chill out-inspired webs.

Volume 1 proves exciting if not a little more traditional and slightly less relaxed than Volume 2. That said, it still proves inspiring and, when followed with a healthy dose of the second album, only brings the listener to an even greater sense of inner-awareness, elevates them to an infinitely higher plane. (Really, if I haven’t said this before: you cannot separate these albums, no matter how you try.) Together they form an awesome, nighttime pastoral, an invocation to a muse that can finally bridge the mind with the soul. These are portraits of a world waking but not awake, people loving and being in love. Highlights include Sunrain, a journey between joy and sadness, Oasis, Echo Waves, Twelve Samples, and Hausaufgabe.«

A collection of some of the best cuts out of two enchanted Japanese concerts and a companion to @shra, this album allows the listener to become a living witness of the intimacy that these musicians convey in mysterious soundwaves, instrumental nightlife refrains, and gorgeous guitar interplay. The result is almost erotic in its warmth, and the visual images that spring magically into the air diaphanously delicious as their soundtrack glimmers with pulsing beads of light. Harald Grosskopf switches smoothly between wondrous percussion and short monumental beats, Steve Baltes grants his kindling gift of atmospherics to each composition, and Manuel Göttsching and Lutz Ulbrich weave their guitars around each other in a sparkling arrangement of shining colors and graceful emotions.

Perhaps the music of Ashra would be grotesquely filed among the growing collection of generic and utterly heartless modern electronic music by the indifferent ear, and that would represent a sin of the greatest of proportions. This transcends the youthfully greedy and commercial intent of such work, crosses over to the progressive in its essence, and acquires a poignant resonance that tunes itself to the soul of the spectator and binds him in enveloping strands of sound. The essence of techno, for instance, conforms the very pillars of Move 9 Up, but Göttsching and Ulbrich lead the piece into a myriad motifs that disappear and then resurge sporadically, leaving the track in a state of progression that is ever-changing before an orgasmic explosion takes place and an electric guitar rips through the air for the record's grand finale.

And it is thus that @shra Vol. 2 gently slides away from constraints and into a perpetual state of timelessness, allowing each of its five constituting elements to evolve slowly in their instinctive nature and become musical stories unto themselves. Even the slightly ominous nature of Hausaufgabe and the delicious mirage guitars of Oasis are but only a fragment of the gorgeous reach of this record, and they nevertheless seem colossal memory imprints of unforgettable quality. The mere surprise of the manner in which Sunrain resolves, resembling the ending grandeur of a baroque organ piece despite its simplicity and deeply shaking the listener from the comfort of expectance, is worth the album alone, and one is left to wonder: were the inhabitants of Tokyo and Osaka presented with magic itself back in 1997? They most certainly were.«