Asmus Tietchens & Achim Wollscheid — Fundstück September 02

Here we have a collaboration between two long-active German electro-acoustic soundmakers, Asmus Tietchens and Achim Wollscheid. Apparently,  the recording was found in a drawer in Tietchen's apartment last year, and it dates back some twenty years. What we have here is a single hour-long track, based around a droning yet often highly glitching soundcraft.

The CD release comes presented in a glossy four-panel digipak- on its front, we have a simple black background with minimal red text around the edges of the cover- with a small cross/ plus sign.  On the other panels, we have murky blue water to rusty steel pictures, with a short/ single paragraph write-up.

I’m not going to lie, when I first popped this into play, I thought there was something wrong with either the disc or my player, as it starts with very loud glitching CD tones. But fairly soon I realised tones were one of the key components of the composition.

As the hour-long piece unfolds, we encounter both the noisy and moody/ harmonic- blending and blurring. These move from plodding vibe tones, pulled grain jitter, brooding drone hovers, gliding/slightly slurred piano key lull,  darting aquatic tonal detail, banging metals, swooning string samples, etc. Towards the end of the track, the glitches themselves seem to have become the drone.

All in all, Fundstück September 02 is an eventful/ compelling example of long-form composition. Sure, I’ve heard works that utilise glitches in the past, but not to such an important/ structural level- so it’s certainly something fairly distinctive.