Asmus Tietchens - The Aesthetics of Abstraction

There is, in any case, a notion of abstraction in the way you work with these microstructures. Or rather, abstraction with respect to the traditional idea of "music," because in the end what you're doing is an extremely concrete investigation of sound, stripped of any possible accidental distraction (evocations, images, sensations). This focus on the essence of sound is a constant feature of much of your work. Is it something you pursue intentionally, or a consequence of your aesthetic research?

Abstraction and sound, exactly. I obviously try to steer clear of the fashion for "picture music" or "Programmusik," so popular in the nineteenth century. Images, evocations, and moods in general have nothing to do with my music. A very important component, instead, is time. The structures of each piece need time to emerge, and as a composer it's my job to decide the order in which to arrange them in time. It's a matter of proportion, as is the question of dynamics: I find the gradient between extremely low and extremely high volume very interesting. And just as fundamental is silence, which is often a convenient content in itself. In short, yes, I'd say abstraction, sound, temporal organization, and volume combined with silence sum up my main interests quite well.

Throughout your career, you've always pursued parallel paths without setting up barriers of style or concept. Do you believe stylistic boundaries and definitions still make sense, or did they ever really make sense at all?

No, no boundary in any art form makes sense. This kind of limitation has never mattered to me. They're nothing more than Procrustean beds that mutilate those artists who feel comfortable squeezing themselves onto those shelves.

You're one of the few artists of your generation who has consistently kept pace with the present. You started out in kraut-rock, then evolved through industrial, glitch, noise experiences and projects geared toward electroacoustic music, arriving in recent decades at a form of almost installation-based sound art. Do you think this "chameleon-like" tendency might be the secret that has always kept your art current?

I don't think it's really about keeping my art current or "young." Glitch, noise, and all the movements of the past and present are nothing but permanent stimuli for freeing up an aesthetic. My role in all this isn't that of some great inventor, but rather that of a composer who can trace his own personal path within the context of all these fantastic technical and sonic developments.

Have your compositional and performance techniques, and your instrumentation, evolved alongside your sound? In that sense, have you ever felt the need to maintain a common approach even through the many evolutions of your research?

When I made my first audio cassette in 1965, I used only an amateur two-track tape recorder and nothing else. But I had so much going on in my head that there was no way I could realize it with such limited equipment. So I kept steadily building up my arsenal of gear. Whenever I had new ideas for sounds and structures that I couldn't achieve with what I had, I simply bought whatever I needed. For about ten years now, I think I've been so well equipped that I don't need to buy anything anymore, aside from software updates and the occasional plug-in that makes certain operations easier. With one exception a few years back, when I got hold of the entire instrument package from GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales, ed.), which is very useful. On that note: I've never used Max/MSP (software that provides a multimedia development environment, perhaps the most widespread for developing interactive computer composition technologies, ed.).

What role did being born and raised during the most fertile period of kraut-rock play in your background? You're perhaps the only musician of your generation who has always tried to steer clear of that world, at least soundwise...

Kraut was a movement that, after rock'n'roll, the Beatles and psychedelia, brought about the substantial dismantling of every pre-established rule in the pop realm. Fantastic, yes! But not so fundamental for me, since I was more interested in and fascinated by serious music à-la-Pierre Schaeffer (a term sometimes used ironically to highlight the "scientific," never lightweight character of GRM's research into musique concrète, ed.), by the electronic music of the Cologne school, and by the ideas of Joseph Beuys. Some works from the kraut world fascinated me greatly, like those of Cluster and the first two Kraftwerk albums, but that's music that influenced me just as much as, say, Carl Orff and Olivier Messiaen.

Staying on the kraut theme, your relationship with Cluster also developed on an artistic level through various collaborations, the last of which was no more than three years ago. What did that "amarcord" with Dieter Moebius represent, and on what basis did that album come about, so distant from the sounds you'd shared in the past?

After the "Liliental" sessions in 1976, which involved five musicians including Dieter and myself, he and I remained set on the idea of eventually managing to put out a record credited to Moebius + Tietchens. Well, it took us thirty-five years, but we kept our promise. Still, it seemed pointless to go back to our seventies roots in 2012, so we tried to make something more in line with contemporary sounds.

Recently I came across a couple of reissues of your old work courtesy of Bureau B, specifically "Litia" and "In The Nacht": two works fairly close, in a sense, to the more expressionist side of electronic kraut-rock, speaking the language of industrial at least a couple of years ahead of its actual development. Do you still feel close to those experiments in relation to your current idea of sound?

The brief but intense period with Sky Records lasted no more than three years. A great experience for trying to work on the rhythm-harmony pairing, something I lost interest in fairly quickly once I realised my limitations in that area. By 1982 I'd already started plagiarising myself, so it was time to let go of those sounds. Yes, I personally took care of remastering the old analogue tapes and getting them to Bureau B. In any case, those tracks have almost no connection to my current sound - they're light years away, both aesthetically and in terms of time.

The last question concerns the particular bond between your art and Emil Cioran's philosophy, evident from the titles of your records, as you told me yourself. Do you think this bond, even before being semantic and conceptual, lies at the very essence of your way of making art? I'm thinking in particular of a famous maxim of Cioran's: "Devi cercare tutto dentro te stesso, e se non trovi niente, devi lasciar perdere". In that sense, your research - in which sound becomes a mirror reflecting a particular aesthetic conception, the substance used to "fill" conceptual forms - constantly comes "from yourself", rather than from sound itself. How (and where) did this bond with Cioran develop?

Since 1985, a quote from Cioran has accompanied every one of my records. I'm a sceptic, as Cioran was too, even though he's often spoken of as an absurdist. I try to channel that same scepticism into the music, but since music can't itself be sceptical, I try to make it so through a particular reading, suggested by those quotes. As a true sceptic, though, I sometimes find myself sceptical even of Cioran himself. To quote him directly, "being means being in difficulty".

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google