Friday 10 April 2015

Asmus Tietchens ‎– Musik An Der Grenze" (YHR Tapes ‎– YHR 024) 1982

If there's one worthwhile thing that came from Germany,apart from boringly efficient engineering,trains that run on time, Beethoven and Nietzche; it's electronic music.God knows they need something big to eclipse their darker legacy,mentioning no names......ok.....Nena's "99 Red Balloons".....alright,alright.....and Hitler!.......satisfied now?
This cassette, however is brilliant!
Emotionless electronica,with a bit of a beat,from the Berlin School of electronic muzik.
Cut'n'paste time for the "Arty" bit;
"Tietchens is a German electronic musician who has pursued "absolute music" through an almost mathematical process of rigid formal exercises. With strong ties to Karlheinz Stockhausen's early electronic work, Tietchens specializes in irregular patterns of sonic abstractions that are suspended in gray drones to create cold textural voids from external references."
Understand now?
We understood without any patronising explanations thank you very much! 
As per normal, it took the British Isles (Admittedly Germanic cousin's,but without the crushing rigidity), to lighten it all up a bit,and adding emotions into the mix. Kraftwerk is great as a concept of a cyborg future, but for now we need the human element for it to make any sense.
Musically this raw,cold ,electronics,with all the beauty of unpolished analogue wonder. Could even be Tietchens best record.....in my opinion.


Tracklist:

A1Konstrukt 2 
A2Elektrauma 2
B1Kultmusik Für Ein Altes Ländle
B2Titanic

DOWNLOAD and feel superior HERE!

11 comments:

Alan Burns said...

Nice one! Been working my way through AT's Sky albums in the last few weeks, but already getting a sense that the real gold in his vast catalogue lies on a myriad of tapes on tiny labels. Need to give this a good listen!

Jonny Zchivago said...

Indeed, there are four more cassettes to follow this one,of which i listened to this one more than the others.

Anonymous said...

thanks for this !

Anonymous said...

Agree with Alan this is streets ahead of Biotop released on Sky a year or so before - indeed my favourite Tietchens so far.
Velvet Plush

Steffen said...

Thank you.

Unknown said...

Many thanks for the Asmus Tietchens tapes, I thought I would have to wait for Bureau B to eventually getting round to reissuing them on CD before I got the chance to hear any of them.

This and the other two tapes you have posted are just incredible - I do remember his name appearing on the compilation tapes I used to buy as a young teenager in the early eighties (but unlike your good self, I was stupid enough to dump a huge collection of them years ago) - remembering his name prompted me to buy some of the album reissues last year.


Though unlike the comments above, I'm a big fan of Biotop, Litia, Spat-Europa and In Die Nacht and listen to them regularly - many of the tracks still sound like the future and it is a pleasure to see the look of astonishment on peoples faces when you tell them it was made over 30 years ago (Conrad Schnitzler/Kluster/Pyrolator have a similar effect to this day).

Look forward to your next AT post (I think you mentioned you had one more).

Jonny Zchivago said...

Don't feel bad, I too have disposed of skip loads of tapes and records over the years,mainly to finance buying newer ones! Cassettes seemed so disposable at the time,and one never thought anyone,including myself, would be interested in old music.The next thing was the goal. Unfortunately there is no 'next thing' anymore.Just doing a more polished old thing.
Yep, one more tape to go.

xylem777 said...

Sadly o/p - our licence expired and we tried to get licence for CD reissues, but it never worked out. BTW slightly different versions can be found in the VOD 4K7 LP set

These are indeed amongst the best Asmus ever produced. I also have an excellent unreleased one called "Sieben Topophonien"

Jonny Zchivago said...

Hey Alan, how about donating a "Sieben Topophonien" file for us AT fans?
You can have a free UT advert in return.
JZ (ex-UT conduit street shop customer)

Unknown said...

Thanks a lot

Ursa Minor said...

Hi, many thanks for this hard to find little gem ! :)