While most of the recent releases from Tietchens have been Die Stadt’s archival releases and a few collaborations, this is his first full vinyl album in quite some time. As expected, it is a carefully nuanced series of pieces that fully reflects his clinical, yet inviting and engaging, take on abstract composition and sound art.
The first track of this is the side-long "Teilmenge 20," which begins as a set of indecipherable static electricity clicks that are quite warm and engaging, which quickly builds to a rhythmic cycle, continuing to mutate and diverge throughout the entire track. Most interestingly, as the rhythm sets in it truly begins to resemble a traditional 4/4 techno beat. The tempo and percussive elements are there, but the sounds in no way resemble the stale drum machines and overwrought synths.
As the piece progresses through its 21 minute duration, this influence becomes even more notable, with abstract crunches, sustained tones and raw noise stabs that aren’t far removed from the sort of elements a long form minimal techno track would include, but rather than obvious beats and keyboards, it is instead a palette of dissonant sounds and glitch textures that comprise the mix. This would be great to hear the inevitable vinyl wear and tear set in: the basic sounds are similar enough to vinyl surface noise that once the clicks and pops set in, it will probably create what sounds like a new and unique "remix."
The flip side has a much more isolated and reserved character in contrast to the almost upbeat "Teilmenge 20." "Teilmenge 33" also shows a sense of rhythm, though it is far more subtle and simplistic, and also uncomfortable: it is extremely sparse and irregular, so the "beats" never fit in when expected. Otherwise the track is full of deep cavernous scrapes and clanks, covered in a spacious, yet dark reverb. "Ein Weiteres Leben Geht Zu Ende" continues this isolated feeling, a wide open bed of tense sound on which slow collages of scrapes and crashes are built. Its slow, minimalist quality is similar in approach to the dark ambient/isolationist works by the likes of Lull and Final in the mid to late 1990s.
The closing "Teilmenge 33A" is a drastic reworking of the other track: it retains the airy, cold wind like textures and subtle bass pulse, but adds in old sci-fi style synth noises of varying durations that are almost TOO contrasting, because they feel somewhat out of place from the other textures on this LP. As a whole though, it is another great work from Asmus Tiechens that continues his clinical dissection of sound into its basic elements, and then recompiles it into something wonderfully abstract, yet carefully nuanced and structured.
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