Asmus Tietchens

by John BushSynthesizer experimentalist and musique concrète producer Asmus Tietchens began recording in the mid-'60s and continued to record three decades after that. Born in 1947 and based in Hamburg, Tietchens listened to German radio as a child and heard pioneering electric transmissions by the likes of Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig. He began recording his own home experiments in 1965 with crude reverb devices and picked up a MiniMoog several years later. Also influenced by atonal Kraut-rockers like Cluster and Faust, Tietchens met Okko Bekker and began a partnership that lasted for decades (Bekker has produced most of Tietchens' work). After Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann heard a tape of his work, he produced Tietchens' debut album Nachtstücke, released in 1980 on Sky Records. His four albums for Sky during the early '80s focused on surprisingly accessible electronic pop, though 1984's Formen Letzter Hausmusik (recorded for Nurse with Wound's United Dairies label) began a period of more abstract, concrète recordings that often use tape experiments as well as synthesizers. During the '90s, Tietchens recorded for experimental labels Barooni, Staalplaat and Syrenia, the latter a 1996 collaboration with Vidna Obmana. Since 1990, he has also taught sound at a Hamburg university.