Asmus Tietchens & Dirk Serries — Air

Air brings together two respected & key figures of the more moody/ drone fed side of European experimental music. Asmus Tietchens is a Hamburg-based acoustician and experimental electronic composer who has been active since the 1970’s carving out his distinctive sound, and Dirk Serries is Belgium based guitarist & ambient composer who might be better known to many as Vidna Obmana- which started off in the early 80’s as post industrial project, before moving into more ambient terroirty to become one of the most respected euro names in the ambient/ drone genre. 

Air comes in the form of a CD on New Wave Of Jazz Records, and finds the pair offer up a six track forty six minute album of mournful & gloomy modified pieces that sit somewhere between unwell ambience & drone-out modern compositions.

The CD is presented inside a white and grey boxed mini gatefold- all of this labels releases appear in this house style design- which nicely highlights the labels more abstract & stark releases, as well as letting the music speak for it’s self. Inside the gatefold we get a write-up about the album from Guy Peters.

The sonic set-up of the players here is Tiecthens treatments/ manipulation, and Serries Clarinet, Melodica, concertina, accordion, & harmonica. The track lengths fall between four and ten minutes a piece, and while the whole album retains a slurred/ bleakly stretched quality, there is variation between one track and another.

We begin with “Air Klarinet 1”- which from the title I’m guessing it’s utilizing clarinet- the nearing five minute track starts off feeling like an unused cue from Popol Vuh’s soundtrack Nosferatu the Vampyr- with it’s hovering vibe of gloomy wind fed grandness, before latter the drone become more warbled & bowed in it's loops giving a feeling of rundown melancholy . “Air Akkordeon” is a eight minute journey into rising-yet- wavering gothic like piping’s that are underfed by fleeting snaps & clicks- sounding all the world like bony finger flicks. And  the final track “Air Klarinette 2” is a just over seven minute of waving & warbling horn drones, that very much have the quality of early Residents horn compositions, but with even more slurry & wonk-ness about them.

With Air Tiecthens and Serries have certainly managed to create a fairly distinctive release- that offers up an effective, and fairly varied take on wavering and unwell drone matter- making for an album that is difficult to pigeon hole into one genre bracket, but it will certainly be of interest to those who enjoy mood bound wonk-iness.