![\"line051\"](\"https:\/\/www.aufabwegen.de\/at\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/line051.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCD <\/strong> Tracklist<\/strong> Annotations<\/strong> Description<\/strong> Source<\/strong> LINE press release:<\/strong> Reviews:<\/strong> Soir\u00e9e documents the findings of action research from\u00a0Asmus Tietchens, who embarks on this inquiry into exponential recycling problematizing the notion of original musical creation in the current climate. Tietchens first fiddled with tape players, musique concr\u00e8te, and electronic boxes of tricks, in the mid-60s, continuing through the 70s with futuristic proto-Kosmische (ending in a Peter Baumann of\u00a0TD)-produced debut album) to diverse projects in the 80s\/90s that saw him embraced by those of a more esoteric industrial persuasion. The veteran has thus shadowed the musico-technological Zeitgeist over four decades, poking into all manner of compositional nooks and process crannies along the way. Now well into his mid-60s, an extensive back\u00a0catalogue on labels from Mille Plateaux and Die Stadt through Staalplaat to United Dairies behind him, he draws on a range of different methods and tools, morphing sources beyond Ur-tone to leave eight uneasy pieces, equal parts alien atmospheres and nervy nullity. Present spectrally, like the ectoplasm of the original, cryptic clatters and jittery jolts incide with sound-splice detritus whose corporeality has perdured the recycle mangle with varying degrees of damage. Attended by a sense of removal, as if a series of slide-bound specimens presented for inspection, it is, in this sense, a genuinely Experimental work, warts and all. Tietchens sternly propounds \u201cabsolute music,\u201d implying manipulation of found sound in ways suggested by the material itself, and denying recourse to any outside frames of reference. Fair enough, but how is it to whistle in the shower? Samples: starter \u201cp1B\u201d startling with uncouth pings ceding to greyscale drone, static waves and alien audio events. \u201cL2Rb\u201d filling an unquiet void with clunking transmissions over a long thin wire from deep space; cousin \u201cL2RD\u201d transmuting the former\u2019s queasy peripheralia to more alluring musicality \u2013 organic pianoid synth pulses revising the preceding digital alienation (\u201cL2RC\u201d later using some of the same tonal elements, framed differently again). \u201cNox 1,\u201d a glassine dream of nocturnal hum punctuated by angular shards of metal, while \u201cNox 3\u2033 looms up with wriggles, blips, and peculiar prefabs sprouted from field fiddlings, processed modulations and choral approximations. Unfamiliarity with Tietchen\u2019s source material precludes before-and-after-science appraisal. These are shaky hand-held documents of listening objects moving from stillness towards motion and structure, propelling peals and evanescent excrescences through the aether, only to end in dusty dissolves, vaporous vanishings. Tietchens is compelled by the variety of results, and the wider recycling implications, querying the notion of the \u2018original\u2019 and the sanctity of the individual act of creation\u2014the spawning of ever more \u2018new\u2019 musical expressions when one existing piece can yield endless distinct derivations. Ambience-chasing Line-lovers will likely be left cold by the concept and its articulation via these austere and elusive sketches.\u00a0Soir\u00e9e\u2019s world is one of twilight zone tintinnabulations that sits sternly at the Absolute (as in Music) end of the Line continuum\u2014in a concr\u00e8te bunker where friends of\u00a0Schaeffer and\u00a0Stockhausen reunite; Line has the textural indulgence angle covered by Stephan Mathieu, so let them have their\u00a0Soir\u00e9e. ‚Recycling‘ is a word not many people use these days in relation to music. ‚Remix‘ is the more appropriate word, according to them. ‚Recycling‘ however is the term that appeals to Asmus Tietchens. Take the multi-track tapes of any old piece, and treat the sounds again, with new technology and create a new piece. That’s what he does on this new release: eight ‚distinct‘ pieces from the past, recycled into something new. I know his work pretty well, may even have all of his releases, but I had a hard time recognizing any of these ‚distinct‘ pieces, which means that either I don’t know his work that well, or perhaps Tietchens succeeds well in his mission. I think its indeed the latter. Methods and tools change, says Tietchens, quite rightly. For this work he continues to the methods and tools of recent years: reduction. Feed the original sounds through some devices and new textures appear, minimal perhaps, emptier for sure. The kind of music he does for quite a while, starting with his\u00a0Ritornell CDs and later his work for Line. As you can imagine from my remark about having all his work, you can easily guess I’m a big admirer of his work and therefore perhaps not the kind of guy to write a very objective review. Maybe I’m not; I do like almost anything Tietchens produces, and with slow moving gestures, he also slowly moves his music. These eight pieces (I really wish I had a clue as what the originals are!) are highly delicate and sound uniquely as something from Tietchens. Maybe Tietchens‘ next move should be to an interactive release: have an original piece of music and some kind of software which allows the listener to creates all sorts of variations himself? Disons que je suis en ce moment m\u00eame, en prenant des notes, en train d\u2019\u00e9couter le nouveau disque d\u2019Asmus Tietchens.\u00a0Richard Chartier l\u2019a publi\u00e9 sur LINE. Avouerais-je que c\u2019est la premi\u00e8re fois que je l\u2019\u00e9coute ? Ferais-je croire que c\u2019est la \u00e9ni\u00e8me ? Au fait, est-il d\u00e9j\u00e0 sorti ? A typically elegant and challenging offering from Line, courtesy of veteran electronic music pioneer Asmus Tietchens. The 68-year-old German first took to the field in the mid-1960s, when he developed his own brand of concr\u00e9te using tape recorders, sine wave generators and the like. Since the release of his first album in 1980, produced by Tangerine Dream’s Peter Baumann, Tietchens has kept pace with technology and sought out new compositional strategies, clocking up releases on such respected labels as Mille Plateaux, Staalplat and Nurse With Wound’s United Dairies along the way. Soiree is apparently „the result of endless recycling“ – versions of versions of versions of versions (and so on) of old tracks from the Tietchens archive. Applying a range of different methods and tools to the recycling process, he moves further and further away from the source material. What we’re left with are eight electronic explorations that we’d happily call ambient, were they not so dynamic and humming with occult power (it’s easy to see why Tietchens was adopted by the industrial cognoscenti in the 80s). Tietchens, one of my favorite sound artists, approaches this new album from a different tact than his others.\u00a0 Rather than composing with new sounds, he instead chose to recycle existing material and recordings through various processing techniques, some receiving up to ten reinventions before completion, resulting in one of his most sparse, yet diverse works. \u201cIs it really necessary to create further new electronic music,\u201d Tietchens queries, \u201cif only one piece as a nucleus is sufficient to derive\u00a0hundreds and hundreds of different distinct individual variants?\u201d This is \u201crecycling\u201d \u2013 not \u201cremixing\u201d \u2013 and I imagine Tietchen\u2019s insistence on this distinction stems from connotations of each. Remix implies an adjustment to the original (while retaining the original as the definitive), while recycling involves the resourcing of the original in the creation of something\u00a0new: a completely separate, non-dependent entity. Presented here are eight pieces in their tenth stage of recycling, having been created, re-used and created afresh, over and over again. All of the eight utterly splendid tracks comprised by\u00a0Soir\u00e9e\u00a0are old Asmus Tietchens selections that he subjected to ten layers of\u00a0recycling process, each layer the reworking of the previous \u201cversion\u201d. When I read, on the sleeve, the composer\u2019s philosophical\u00a0question regarding the necessity of producing new music when there is a chance of infinite generations of material from just one\u00a0piece my amazement grew, since that is exactly the same thought that repeatedly pricks the mind during growingly longer stretches\u00a0of time spent without actually composing, only playing. And yet, there is no discontinuity in an artist\u2019s life: even when silent,\u00a0something inside is always ready to be transformed into consequence. Tietchens is a master of sonic camouflage, so \u2013 despite the\u00a0different origin of this particular work \u2013 the results are pretty similar to the ones found in many of his past milestones. Silences that\u00a0countare interspersed between sudden apparitions of strange codes; washes of frequencies halfway through a \u201cmoribund choir\u201d\u00a0(alright, a definition half-stolen from Mike Oldfield\u2019s\u00a0Tubular Bells) and a Kafkian fog clutch our stomach and don\u2019t let it go until\u00a0remote infancy vibrations are perceived. This composite of dejection and bliss symbolizes one of the most distinguishable styles in\u00a0contemporary audio art. But the incredible modesty of the perpetrator of these crimes against mediocrity makes sure that\u00a0fundamental opuses remain virtually unnoticed in the places where \u201cgood connection\u201d means much more than \u201ccreative ability.“ Nice idea. Roden, using a text by Donald Judd, selected a sequence therein of the letters A through G, recorded them on an old\u00a0Paia Oz, played back the result,at dawn, in a gallery of some 50 of Judd’s sculptures in Marfa, recording it all on a digital recorder, an iPhone and a micro-cassette recorder. One has the sense of other exterior sounds bleeding through though perhaps they’re artifacts of the devices themselves. In any case they’re a welcome tonic to the thick, syrupy (in a good sense) mini-organ tones, scraping and scouring them. It’s 42 minutes is sometimes in danger of palling, but those background sounds buttress the Paia Oz, supplying the necessary tension, even dominating the affair on occasion. Toward the end, one hears a cascade of marvelous, hollow pings, which Roden identifies as the Judd sculptures themselves, expanding in the growing warmth of the room as the sun rose and beamed through the glass-sided enclosure. A lovely way to end. C\u2019est v\u00e9ritablement ce disque qui a motiv\u00e9 l\u2019initiative de ce dossier un peu particulier. La premi\u00e8re \u00e9coute de Soir\u00e9e rappelle une fois de plus que l\u2019auditeur est \u00e0 la merci des grands disques, que parfois la composition s\u2019impose sans autre formule, qu\u2019\u00e0 ce moment-l\u00e0 il faut se taire et en prendre plein les mirettes. Asmus Tietchens est l\u2019un des papes allemands du minimalisme concret, et \u00e7a se sent, \u00e0 commencer par le concept : que se passera-t-il si on recycle sans cesse ses anciens morceaux, et que le produit de ce recyclage est lui-m\u00eame recycl\u00e9 \u00e0 son tour ? Les nouveaux sons et structures ne d\u00e9pendront d\u00e8s lors plus que des m\u00e9thodes et des outils utilis\u00e9s. Asmus Tietchens de conclure : \u00ab Est-il donc r\u00e9ellement n\u00e9cessaire de cr\u00e9er de nouvelles pi\u00e8ces de musiques \u00e9lectroniques quand une seule pi\u00e8ce servant de noyau est suffisante pour en obtenir des centaines de variations diff\u00e9rentes ? \u00bb. Quel que soit le concept, Soir\u00e9e est une vraie claque. On tient l\u00e0 une ambient d\u2019une luminosit\u00e9 folle, mais cette fois observ\u00e9e \u00e0 partir d\u2019un orifice minuscule. Parfois le spectre s\u2019\u00e9largit avec l\u2019un ou l\u2019autre drone qui rehausse l\u2019ensemble de mani\u00e8re sensible, mais c\u2019est surtout l\u2019ajout de mat\u00e9riaux concrets qui donne le v\u00e9ritable rythme \u00e0 l\u2019ensemble. Parfois \u00e7a tonne de mani\u00e8re abrupte, souvent les retentissements font place \u00e0 des plages qui glissent dans un paradis de nappes d\u2019\u00e9ther. D\u2019un silence \u00e0 un autre silence. Un tr\u00e8s grand disque, qui poss\u00e8de une trame narrative assez rare. Asmus Tietchens, the Hamburg-based acoustician and experimental electronic composer, follows up his recent\u00a0collaborations with Richard Chartier (or \u2018Fabrications\u2019, as they put it) with a set of solo recordings for Chartier\u2019s Line\u00a0imprint. CD<\/strong>
\nLine \u2022 Line_051 \u2022 USA 2011
\n500 copies<\/p>\n
\n01\u00a0p1B 4\u201953\u201c
\n02 Nox 1 2\u201937\u201c
\n03 L2RB 6\u201958\u201c
\n04 L2RD 7\u201924\u201c
\n05 Nox 3 5\u201903\u201c
\n06 p1 8\u201944\u201c
\n07 L2RC 6\u201937\u201c
\n08 p2A 7\u201905\u201c<\/p>\n
\nProduced by Okko Bekker<\/p>\n
\nN\/A<\/p>\n
\nN\/A<\/p>\n
\nLINE is proud to present a new full length solo recording by German electronic music pioneer Asmus Tietchens.
\nSoir\u00e9e<\/em> is the result of extended recycling. Beginning from the investigation of: what will happen if I recycle (not remix) some of my older compositions and then recycle the recyclings and then recycle the recycled\u00a0recyclings\u2026 ad infinitum? Quite quickly the initial pieces vanished totally. New structures and sounds emerged depending on the methods and tools I used.
\nEach of the pieces on\u00a0Soir\u00e9e<\/em> is based on a distinct composition of my musical past. In each case the listener is presented with the 10th \u201cgeneration\u201d of this recycling process.
\nConfronted with the variety of the results I ask myself: Is it really necessary to create further new electronic music if only one piece as a nucleus is sufficient to derive\u00a0hundreds and hundreds of different distinct individual variants?<\/p>\n
\nSoir\u00e9e is a composition of recycled compositions, sounds and movements of sound have been processed to extremes, or to be clearer they have been processed multitudes of times, sometimes to the 10th generation. It is a reclamation and negotiation of the past not a replaying, it takes the art form of sound design in it\u2019s current state and processes the sounds of past experiments into the frame of the contemporary context and possibilities. The first sound that introduces the first track \u2018p1B\u2019, a sharp metallic awakening tone, almost metal on metal scraping except processed with an electronic gleam. This gives way to minimal drones and sound events as the redcurrant noise makes it\u2019s way back to the center of the audio perspective. \u2018Nox\u2019 is an abstract fragile environ evoking images of whisps of ephemera delicate and poised as if close to shattering. \u2018L2RB\u2019 holds clunks of communication over a wire of thin deep spatial transmission. \u2018L2RD\u2019 introduces more variations in tone and as close to a \u2018narrative\u2019 form as Tietchens is likely to perform, given that structural form and considerations of the the nature of the aspects of the miniature of composition are more heavily considered than the presentation of an available text for the listener. However when this track introduces metallic drum aspects, it almost lends to Asian influences and cultural form of composition. \u2018Nox 3\u2032 has some very close environmental recording aspects as well as the more processed drone like aspects, an almost choral effect with modulation aplenty. \u2018p1\u2032 does the recurring frontal sound trick again with a shark click like sound of static as the glacial electronics fill the backing.
\nSoir\u00e9e holds a soundscape not unlike glacial ambient works, but is perhaps better considered as an exercise in sound design and will appeal to people who have a distinct ear for sound design possibilities, immersive sound environments and developments in the art of electronic sound art.
\n(cyclicdefrost.com)<\/p>\n
\n(igloomag.com)<\/p>\n
\n(Vital Weekly, The Netherlands)<\/p>\n
\nSur la premi\u00e8re plage de\u00a0Soir\u00e9e (on se souvient du classique de\u00a0Tietchens,\u00a0Notturno) nous voil\u00e0\u00a0transport\u00e9. Plus\u00a0avant,\u00a0on re\u00e7oit des claques concr\u00e8tes : notre transport est sans cesse d\u00e9rang\u00e9 par des\u00a0bruits bizarres, aga\u00e7ants. Est-ce\u00a0le r\u00e9sultat de la\u00a0m\u00e9thode de recyclage que\u00a0Tietchens applique ici ?\u00a0Ces bruits qui claquent marquent\u00a0peut-\u00eatre\u00a0chaque nouvelle mue de la partition musicale. Cette m\u00e9thode,\u00a0Tietchens y a recours parce que, dit-il, il se demande s\u2019il est n\u00e9cessaire de cr\u00e9er aujourd’hui de nouvelles compositions \u00e9lectroniques alors qu\u2019une archive peut tout aussi bien\u00a0accoucher\u00a0d\u2019un\u00a0univers.
\nMalgr\u00e9 tout, les morceaux qui suivent se rapprochent de l\u2019ambient \u00ab habituelle \u00bb deTietchens : une ambient exp\u00e9rimentale (m\u00eame si ses exp\u00e9rimentations se font devant un arri\u00e8re-plan solide). Au premier plan, l\u2019Allemand manie beaucoup de bruits \u00e9touff\u00e9s\u00a0et modifie le timbre de voix enregistr\u00e9es. Il \u00e9tablit\u00a0des contrastes\u00a0qui n\u2019ob\u00e9issent \u00e0 aucune r\u00e8gle de temps. Parce qu’une\u00a0fois encore, et malgr\u00e9 la m\u00e9thode qu’il emploie,\u00a0Tietchens va voir au-del\u00e0 du futur et au-del\u00e0 du souvenir. Le m\u00e9ridien sur lequel son horloge est r\u00e9gl\u00e9e n\u2019existe pas.\u00a0Cette\u00a0Soir\u00e9e est merveilleuse parce qu’elle n’appartient qu’\u00e0 lui.
\n(grisli.canalblog.com)<\/p>\n
\n(boomkat.com)<\/p>\n
\nMany of the pieces appear in various mutated forms, sometimes feeling linked to one another, other times appearing as stand-alone works.\u00a0 For example, „L2RB“ and „L2RD“ work together almost as a single composition, but while the former opens with sparse and quiet sounds and digital processing, the latter takes the erratic digital noises and converts them to organic, piano like synth pulses.\u00a0 The dichotomy works perfectly, balancing the digital alienation of the first with the inviting, relaxing sounds of the second.
\n„L2RC,“ which uses some of the same tonal elements as the other two similarly titled tracks, but frames those elements in an entirely different way.\u00a0 Both „p1“ and „p1B“ are also linked conceptually, with an emphasis on distant, subtle waves of static.\u00a0 On „p1B,“ however, Tietchens adds erratic swells of violent feedback that are startling enough to make focusing on the quiet details difficult.
\n„Nox 3“ focuses less on quiet, far-off noises and instead opts for a series of electronic blips and stutters, giving a more collage-sense and also feeling in-line with some of Tietchens work of the early 1980s.\u00a0 „Nox 1“ is more deliberate, emphasizing clinking sounds and shrill, glassy, but melodic passages of sound.
\nCloser „p2A“ pans busy, processed elements from left to right, busy and chaotic but never lacking form or structure.\u00a0 There is a rhythmic click quite low in the mix that almost sounds like cymbals from a drum machine that are filtered and processed into near oblivion, but that may be entirely a figment of my imagination.
\nOne of the side-effects of this meticulous processing and sonic recycling is that, with abstractions of abstractions, the result is a series of sounds that is so far removed from convention that they seeming become a different beast entirely.\u00a0 In the hands of such an expert craftsman such as Asmus Tietchens, the formless sounds are given shape and structure.\u00a0 Even though they are relatively sparse, these compositions reveal new details with each listen.
\n(brainwashed.com)<\/p>\n
\nMost of Soir\u00e9e hovers quietly in the background like the small, ghostly molecules of the original tracks, swirling through the air as a thin layer of ambient dust. In contrast, loud clatters and feedback jolts rise out of the centre \u2013 explicit snippets of sounds that seem to have maintain their shape through the recycling process. The low volume results in a more intimate and observational listening experience \u2013 the sound feels non-immersive, at a distance, as though intended to be examined like a laboratory specimen, with the minute details of its molecular reconstruction placed under the microscope for the listener\u2019s intense inspection.
\nBut how did these tracks sound upon their initial conception? The originals aren\u2019t included, and it strengthens\u00a0Soir\u00e9e\u2019s concept tenfold. These aren\u2019t to be thought of as mere offshoots of a previous work \u2013 they stand independently as pieces in their own right. It sneers at the original\u2019s status as a sacred untouchable, while simultaneously glorifying the original as a rich source for plethoric musical possibilities. It\u2019s also a neatly constructed acknowledgement of the fact that no artistic work is the exclusive and untainted translation of a singular idea: if creative perspective evolves and is tweaked instead of born afresh each time an artist moves from one work to the next, why shouldn\u2019t sound itself reflect this by doing the same?
\n(ATTN: magazine)<\/p>\n
\n(touching extremes, Italy)<\/p>\n
\n(just outside, US)<\/p>\n
\n(Off The Radar, FR)<\/p>\n
\nThe fifty minute disk bears eight cryptically-named and sounding pieces created through rendering a selection of earlier\u00a0works unrecognisable via a ten-part recycling process. And one can assume he must have been pleased with the\u00a0results as he asks on the brief sleeve notes \u201cIs it really necessary to create further new electronic music if only one\u00a0piece as a nucleus is sufficient to derive hundreds and hundreds of different distinct individual variants?\u201d Given his vast\u00a0discography this approach perhaps poses more questions as to the composer\u2019s intentions behind his work as much as\u00a0the specific methodologies involved, where presumably chance now joins mathematics in determining his output.
\nAnd while there seems to be some kind of algebraic naming convention here \u2013 there\u2019s a \u2018P\u2019-series of three, another\u00a0three \u2018L2r\u2019s and a couple of Nox\u2019s \u2013 the titles seem wholly interchangeable: P1\u2019s sleight shafts of soft, aerial tones form\u00a0a light, breathy cascade both solemn and contemplative, only to be interrupted by the briefest of cracks or ticks. The\u00a0opening track, P1b, displays similar wafty properties, but is much more sibilant and ominous, where its snake-like\u00a0elegance is intruded upon by a sharp, shrill train whistle, while P2a closes the set with a series of rhythmically regular\u00a0passages yet is, on the whole, still closer to the eerie sounds of an empty corridor on a sci-fi spacecraft.
\nWhatever the source or the process, the results consistently combine fragile, at times barely detectable, passages of\u00a0amorphous synthetic vapours with sudden surges and unexpected glitches that briefly but strongly pierce through the\u00a0ambience. Like phantoms of their former selves they make a haunting, if unintelligible listening environment.
\n(musiquemachine.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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