Dirk Serries & Asmus Tietchens — Die Regeninsel

Die Regeninsel is a collaborative drone-ambient album from two of the European masters of the form, Dirk Serries & Asmus Tietchens. Both have been actively making work for several decades- building up large but respected discographies. This is a six-track affair, with a fair amount of tonal, textural and atmospheric shift between each track- though the focus is largely dark, troubling, and grim intensity.

The release comes as either a CD or a digital download. I’m reviewing the physical version of the album- the disc comes presented in a mini gatefold- which features moody pictures of corrugated buildings, so a simple yet bleakly effective bit of packaging.

For the release, the pair play the following: Dirk Serries: Electric Guitar, Outboard Effects, and Asmus Tietchens: Processings. You can clearly hear each party's sonic identity within the tracks' makeup, yet as a collab it does sound distinctive. Each track lasts around seven and nine minutes.

We open with the track “Sturm”; this starts with a thick and decidedly chillingly moody wall of ringing/ chiming tones. As it develops, one starts to make out more uneasy psycho ambient tones leaking into the sound mass- with late on a searing static tone appearing, which brought to mind the sound of radiation detection machines.

“Wolken” blends mid to slightly higher tone bays/drones, with a warbling/ wavering pitch hover. The track has a decidedly drowsy & unbalancing quality about it, and this nicely increases the more you home in on certain tones/ pitches. “Elmsefeuer” is the most positive/ hopeful of the tracks here- with its steadily ebbing, chiming, and light noise-simmering mix of tones.

We finish off with “Dunst” which mixes burrowing drones, uneasy pitch sweeps, and grimly churning tone hits. The pair create a great feeling of pressing disquiet with this track, which later on hints at slightly more dark space-bound ambient tone.

Going from the release's Bandcamp there was only a fairly small physical pressing of a few hundred copies- with most of these gone now, so I’d suggest acting sooner rather than later to secure a copy ( link at the top of the review).

If you enjoy either party's work, or drone-ambience in general, Die Regeninsel is a no-brainer. And I do hope these two work together down the line again, as together they do manage to create something distinctive here.