Asmus Tietchens â a name that popped up about 40 years ago for the first time on an album of ambient music by Cluster&Eno (1977) and can be found in various fields of electronic and experimental music ever since, mostly on the fringes of certain genres like industrial, synth-pop, acousmatic, reductionist electronic music or krautrock. Itâs hard to fix his position to a specific scene, instead he seems more like a curious and peculiar mind working his way through all the spheres that catch his curiosity. Although he can be classified as a consistent solo-artist, quite a few collaborations have been exercised with people like the percussionist Jon Mueller, the reductionist electronic composer Richard Chartier, Chrysanthemumsâ Terry Burrows or his duo Kon-takt der JĂŒnglinge (a combination of titles of two early Stockhausen pieces) together with media-artist and composer Thomas Koener. He also appears on an album by the ephemeral Krautrock band-project Liliental (one of the few records featuring studio-wizard Conny Plank as a musician), probably the only real band he ever played in, not to mention his general dislike of most Krautrock.
â Marc Matter
But letâs start at the beginning: Asmus Tietchens was born in Hamburg (*1947), has lived there ever since, and works there mostly in the studio of his old friend Okko Bekkerâa composer of filmscores and advertisments who also guest-starred on the Cluster & Eno album, but has also produced whole works together with Asmus, most notably a concept-album called E that conÂtains succesful imitations of modern classical and avantgarde music. His attachment with the city of Hamburg is close: being a key-figure and a close inspiration to a younger generation of experimental electronic musicians such as Felix Kubin, who admired Tietchens as a kind of chinese master, a laughing monch, an existentialist audio-scientist leaning to impressionÂism who produces real science-fiction with his music. He also used to be involved in the infamous Odradek fanzine, has been rumored of being behind the mysterious Werkbund and Mechthild von Leusch projects together with Uli Rehberg aka Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg (Tietchens repeatedly denied his participation) and still co-runs the monthly Hörbar events of experimenÂtal music in a small cinema (B-Movie). Even his dayjobs that he once had to execute for the sake of his parentsâ peace were typical for Hamburg: trained as a tradesman working in the harbour and later being a copywriter in the advertising business.
Confronted with early german electronic avantgarde music and french musique concrete on the night-programs of germanyâs state-radio as a 12-year old kid, because he somewhat felt obliged to follow the development of the arts as a grammar school student due to his vanity, this kind of music caught his curiosity. The idea to make music himself deÂveloped, and after giving it a try with guitar-playing which failed due to his left-handedness, he started tinkering around with splicing prerecorded tapes and doing random collages of found sound and music as a young teenager. In the mid-60s he systemÂatisized his approach and got access to a Revox tape-machine, and his first piece of tape-music dates back to 1965. Making music continued as a hobby for 15 years, before getting the opportunity to make it public. The LP Formen letzter Hausmusik (transl. Last forms of family-music, 1984) that was released by Nurse With Wounds Steven Stapleton for his United Dairies label contained mostly materiÂal dating from the mid-70s. His active entry into the music-scene as a comÂposer was via the industrial scene, not only releasing on the NWW label but also on Esplendor Geometricoâs later on, but he does not call his own music industrial: âlike i have been on the fringes of industrial music in the 80s, i am nowadays working on the fringes of reductionist musicâ he tells me in a telephone interview. A period in his work as a composer that dates back to the early and mid 80s should not be forgottenâback then the german intellectual pop-magazine Spex (in the July 1985 issue) speculated that âatonal veteran Asmus Tietchens will never lose his reputation as a hippie-electronic (musician) because of his releases on the german Krautrock-label Skyâ, although he still respects these records for what they are: synthie-pop.
While also some of his experiÂmental pieces work with rhythms and repetitive patterns, his current compositions however are rather abstract, sparse and stern, a music not easy to access but starring an idiosynÂcratic beauty; they explore very subtle differences in tone, texture and sound while not hesitating to use silence as an element. He is more and more interested in nuances: âan unattentive listener could gain the impression when listening to an eight minute piece that nothing is happening hereâ he remarks. After starting out with tape-collages and going through phasÂes of synthesized music and a long peÂriod of mixing both, he is back to pure electronic sound: ânowadays i hardly work with concrete sound-material like field-recordings anymore, but use synthetic soundsâ. Nevertheless, two of Tietchens relatively recent radiopieces that he composed for the WDR Ars-Acustica broadcast series exclusively use concentrated field-reÂcordings: Trois Dryades is based on microscopic recordings of a tree that is cut, and Sechs Heidelberger Studien on recordings of an old Heidelberger printing-machine. Both were awarded with the Karl-Sczuka Price for Radio- Art in 2003 and 2006. Unlike other artists who start out radical only to become tamed by habit, his musical abstraction and quaintness increased over time and moreover his curiosity lead him into different genres and styles without losing a certain kind of handwriting.
Asmus Tietchens doesnt mind to talk about his music before his perforÂmances, and he is a great talker. He is also a gifted writer of critical essays on experimental music or linernotÂes for records by Cluster, GĂŒnther Schickert or Institut fuer Feinmotorik that contain remarkable literary qualities. However, he considers his music a music without words, a kind of âabsolute musicââa concept dating back to mid-19th centuries hardcore romanticismâa music that is absoÂlutely self-sufficient, that is not âaboutâ or âstands forâ something but for itself, that does not intend to provoke specific thoughts or feelings amongst the listenÂers (he is a diligent listener of his own music by the way)âin that way being as open for interpretation as it can get: âi have no messages to spread, and i dont know to whom i should adress thoseâ. But nevertheless, he canât help but stick to his habit to include a quotaÂtion of the thinker of extreme pessiÂmism EM Cioran on each record since Seuchengebiete (transl. Pestilence Fields, 1985); thats because he really wants to share those aphorismsânot because he wants to entertain the listener, but to show what intellectual influences he bears. Thus he is not reflecting a worldview or philosophical convicÂtions through his art, âthereâs still some philosophical background noise that inspires the musicâ. Therefore it does not surprise that he characterises his music of the last 20 yearsâwithout any evaluationâas âan attempt to establish a maximal âhuman-distanceââ
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Lecture Marc Matter: Henri Chopin and the editorial experiment: the revue 'OU'
Henri Chopin / William S. Burroughs poster from "OU 38/39" (1971)
Designed by Henri Chopin using text-excerpts from William S. Burroughsâ "Electronic Revolution" (silkscreen), photo: Marc Matter
Tomorrow â 14 04 2016 Â 6pm
Using many examples of sound and visuals from the zone bordering writing, art, and music, in which language is employed as a material for artistic experiments and, above all, plays a role in acoustic and conceptual approaches, the media artist Marc Matter provides some insight into his research into the multimedia art magazine âOU.â The revue âinclassableâ came in an elaborately designed portfolio format, with space for literary, visual, and sound experiments, and was published by the Paris-based sound poet, artist, and publisher Henri Chopin from 1964 to 1974. It contained contributions in various forms: posters, loose sheets, sculptural and object-like bricolage, and vinyl records by artists and authors such as Bernhard Heidsieck, Paul de Vree, Sten Hanson, Ake Hodell, Hugh Davies, Bob Cobbing, François DufrĂȘne, John Cage, Tom Phillips, Michel Seuphor, Ben Vautier, JiĆĂ KolĂĄĆ, William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Annea Lockwood.
Marc Matter was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1974 and is a media artist, primarily in the field of audio, as well as a founding member of the artistsâ group Institut fuer Feinmotorik (Institute for fine motor skills).