Tietchens: Seuchengebiete 2

A seminal record by German electronics pioneer Asmus Tietchens. Born in 1947, and having worked with Cluster (on "Cluster & Eno", 1977) and Peter Baumann from Tangerine Dream (on Tietchens' own first LP "Nachtstücke" from 1980), it would be easy to put Tietchens into one of the late-Krautrock drawers (marked "experimental electronic"). But his unique career and the fact that he's been active for more than 40 years now, still performing and releasing inspiring new music today, invalidate any such categorization.First of all, Tietchens is an autodidact, in the best sense of the term: "No studies, no academic education no scholarships just pure learning by doing = self-taught appropriation of creative skills and handling of analogue and digital studio technology. I am my own Tonmeister." Second, and no less important, he was never led astray by the temptations of commercialism. From his first experiments with tape recorders in 1965 on, he developed a strong urge to explore extremes, blending and merging electronics and concrete sounds something new, exciting and unheard.In the early 80s, with groups like Throbbing Gristle already having left their marks and traces in the newer music history, a close stylistic affinity of Tietchens' work to Industrial Music became evident. After his LP "Formen letzter Hausmusik" (1984) (on the Nurse With Wound/Current 93 label "United Dairies"), numerous releases on labels of the international Industrial scene such as Esplendor Geometrico, Hamster Records, Multimood and A-Mission, followed.Invited by the Goethe-Institute, Tietchens did a series of lecture-concert tours through South America. Since 1989, he teaches sound design, communication design and sound research at the Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften in Hamburg (HAW).From 1991 on, the list of his CD-releases on international labels such as Staalplaat, Soleilmoon, Selektion and Mille Plateaux has grown steadily, alongside numerous collaborations with other composers ranging from "Noise" and "Post-Industrial" to "Ambient", like Merzbow, Achim Wollscheid, Thomas Köner, Vidna Obmana, and many more. Also, Tietchens was repeatedly awarded the important "Karl-Sczuka-Preis für Akustische Kunst" by the Südwestrundfunk (SWR) (that's like the German Grammy for Radio Plays).
http://www.tietchens.de/

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"Seuchengebiete 2" ("epidemic territories") is a very dark affair: concrete sounds, disfigured beyond recognition by filters and other effects, open up vast spaces the listener crosses not with delight, but with awareness and attention to the minute details that come up here and there. Each piece is a continuum, slowly evolving and dragging you on, not unlike one of the late abstract texts by Samuel Beckett. Landscapes that range from metallic stasis to fluid movements and dripping, deep cavern-like ambiences rumble past, leaving only ghostly traces...

1 Hydrophonie 13
2 Hydrophonie 8
3 Hydrophonie 11
4 Hydrophonie 12

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Which curse has befallen the occident so that, at the end of its jaunty career, it spawns nothing but business-people, pepper-sacks, boondoggles with wasted smiles, whom you encounter everywhere, in Italy just as in France, in England like in Germany? Did a civilisation as delicate, as capacious have to end at this vermin?(E.M. Cioran: History and Utopia)

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