Biotop

Last updated
Biotop
AsmusTietchensBiotop.jpg
Studio album by
Asmus Tietchens
Released1981
StudioAudiplex Studios
Genre
Length40:59
Label Sky Records
Producer Rokko Ekbek
Asmus Tietchens chronology
Nachtstucke
(1980)		Biotop
(1981)		Spät-Europa
(1982)

Biotop is the second album by German electronic musician Asmus Tietchens, released in 1981 on Sky Records. Tietchens recorded the album at Audiplex Studios with producer and mentor Okko Bekker, who is credited as Rokko Ekbek. Departing from the musical style of the musician's debut album Nachtstucke (1980), Biotop contains sixteen short electronic pop tracks that are characterised by their immediate nature but unusual synth lines, tones and melodies. Bekker compared the music to radio time signals. Indeed, the liner notes state the album was performed by Das Zeitzeichenorchester, which translates to The Time-Signal Orchestra, although in reality this is an alias for Tietchens, the album's only performer.

Contents

The first of four albums Tietchens recorded for Sky Records, Biotop was released to general acclaim, although it sat in obscurity. It was remastered and re-released on CD with bonus material via Die Stadt in 2003, bringing it renewed critical attention, and again via Bureau B in 2013. Retrospective critics have posed the album as a predecessor to the IDM and electropop styles.

Background and production

Asmus Tietchens in Sydney, 2009. Asmus Tietchens (3678088685).jpg
Asmus Tietchens in Sydney, 2009.

Asmus Tietchens began making experimental electronic music in 1965, and several years later purchased a MiniMoog. Nonetheless, he did not issue an album until Nachtstücke (1980), produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream and released on French label Egg Records, [2] although the musician had recorded a tape music album with Okko Bekker and Hans Dieter Wohlmann in the mid-late 1960s entitled Adventures in Sound, which remained unreleased until published in a double album set with Nachtstucke. [3] Biotop was the musician's second official album. [4] His intention for the album was to write tracks with no bass lines, in order to "erase any commercial potential the record might have." [5]

Okko Bekker (under the pseudonym Rokko Ekbek) produced the album, which was recorded at Audiplex Studios, where it was also mixed by Bekker. [6] In the liner notes, Tietchens jokes that the album was recorded with his backing band Das Zeitzeichenorchester (roughly translated as "The Time-Signal Orchestra"). The names of the musicians in the imagined band are anagrams of the musician's own name, including Stu 'The Cute' Sins. [5] Among the electronic equipment used by Tietchens on the album are a ring modulator, flanger and harmonizer. [6]

Composition

Biotop is a quirky electronic album dominated by usage of the CompuRhythm drum machine and synthesizers. [7] The tracks are short, and most run for under three minutes, but Tietchens' "warped sense" of melody, wherein synth lines and notes slip out of tune and "out of control," stops the music from being simple. [7] Brainwashed wrote that each of the tracks on the "quirky pop" album is a "rich, two-minute exercise in Tietchens' inimitable melodic style, filtered through vintage synths and drum machines." [5] Writer Dominique Leone commented on Tietchens' "mastery of highbrow composition guised in synth-pop's veneer" and described the album's tracks as loopy études which take the form of "short, immediately distinctive electro-snap jingles." [4] Tietchens' mentor Okko Bekker compared the music's "sparse and concise nature" to radio time signals. [5] Although most of the music is light in tone, this style is offset by several unsettling explorations into ambient music, such as "Miss Ann Trope" and the title track. [7] Indeed, the album has been described as having a detached, claustrophobic feel. [5]

"Blutmund" features dirty synth tones and queasy harmonies. [8] According to Leone, "Modern Arroganz" takes synth-pop to its "logical endpoint" by incorporating staccato snares and "uptempo robo-funk" overlaid with minimal hits of the Moog synthesiser alongside computerised vocals. [4] With its bossa nova-influenced sound and glacial synths, [8] "Trümmerköpfe" features exotica-styled sound effects in a style similar to Juan García Esquivel and a cha-cha 4
4 beat. [4] Although the track's plonky lead melody is mostly a synth line, a jarring interval briefly occurs when it jumps "a 6th and a bit," a contrast from the tonality that characterises the rest of the piece. [8] Throughout its three minutes, "Sekundentanz" poses an electronic take on spectralism, with a droning cluster working through intensely different tones. [8] The title track is among the more experimental tracks, opening with a singular note which expands to incorporate overtones from a variety of synthesizer technology that Leone recons "most musicians probably haven't even explored now, much less in 1981." As the increasing amount of fuzzy ambient layers obscure the original tone, the sounds suddenly recede. [4]

Release and reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [7]
Pitchfork 8.5/10 [4]

Biotop was released by Sky Records in 1981 as the label's 57th album release. [9] [10] The album cover was credited to "Tina Tuschemess". [6] Stylistically consistent with other Tietchens albums like Litia (1983), the artwork for Biotop features no photographs of Tietchen. [11] In a contemporary review for German magazine Pardon , Venske Henning recommended Biotop and felt that "Tietchens produces for himself and for people with imagination." He believed the album would be suited for Pink Floyd fans and listeners who felt the boundaries of "electronic sounds and noises" had yet to be furthered. [1] Having been long unavailable on CD, Biotop was remastered and released on the format in 2003 by the Die Stadt label as the second in a series of 18 CDs covering Tietchen's early material. [4] [12] This version adds two previously unreleased bonus tracks entitled "Futurum Drei" and "Fast Food". [4] On 20 August 2013, the album was re-released as a 180 gram vinyl by record label Bureau B. [13] [14]

Among retrospective reviews, François Couture of AllMusic considered Biotop to be a "big leap" from Tietchens' debut album. He felt the musician's "unpredictability" had kept the album "fresh" over time despite the aged technology it uses, writing that "[y]ou simply cannot tell where these short tunes (nothing over four minutes, most under three) will go, even if they appear to be simple, even simplistic." [7] Dominique Leone of Pitchfork cited Biotop as his favourite Tietchens album and recommended it for fans of "futuristic pop" bands Kraftwerk and Cluster. He wrote that the album was a "delight" from the most "consistently enjoyable" period of Tietchen's career, and hoped it would turn him into a household name among "houses that already hold modern-day groups like Mouse on Mars, Kammerflimmer Kollektief and even The Notwist in high esteem." [4]

In their review, Brainwashed felt that Biotop ventured further into "the quirky pop idiom" only hinted at with Tietchen's debut album, commenting that it "[weaves] heady, claustrophobic atmospherics in and out of each robotic beat and dated synth whirl." They praised how the album "keeps a bizarre, grainy distance" even during its most bouncy moments, "invoking the kind of antique futurism groups like Trans Am wish they had it in them to create," and although they felt the personality of Tietchens' later works was absent, the album is nonetheless "a fascinating, elusive little creation, valuable apart from its status as a document of the brilliant musician's formative years." [5] Kev Nickells of Freq reviewed the record alongside its Sky Records follow-up Spät-Europa (1982); he felt both albums were "historically important" and "an important snapshot of a time in synths" which remain engaging on their own terms. He considered Biotop to have an unusual sound, highlighting the "perpetual sense that minor keys can sound a lot more unpleasant when the body of the note is missing a few critical overtones or has some filter/envelope on it that makes the square waves entirely revolting." [8]

Legacy

"[Biotop] sounded like the work of a composer obviously at home with discordant textures and off-kilter beats, yet had a patchwork, DIY charm belying his pedigree as a "serious" composer."

—Dominique Leone, Pitchfork [15]

Biographer John Bush of AllMusic cites Biotop as the first in a period of "surprisingly accessible electronic pop" albums by Tietchens that continued for three further albums – Spät-Europa, In die Nacht and Litia – also released on the Sky Records label. [2] In a 1995 interview, Tietchens said: "The four Sky albums were a brief period, a short trip into the fields of electronic pseudo-pop. I never did such things before." [16] In a 2005 Pitchfork article, Leone wrote that Biotop highlighted Tietchen's often-overlooked role in the development of electronic pop, saying that although the album's "discordant textures and off-kilter beats" were characteristic of the composer, the music's do-it-yourself ethos belied his reputation as a "serious" composer. [15]

Leone also commented that Biotop was crucial to the development of IDM, [4] while Couture commented that the album predicted the electropop of 2000s acts like Felix Kubin and Reznicek. [7] "Blutmund" was reportedly an influence on The Fall's song "I Am Damo Suzuki", [8] from the group's acclaimed album This Nation's Saving Grace (1985). [17] In 2018, musician Helena Hauff named Biotop as one of her thirteen favourite albums in a list for The Quietus . She said: "It's so ahead of its time, and it still sounds so fresh and modern and not in any way dated. It still sounds like the vision of the future." She felt the "versatile" album had "so many ideas and feelings" that were suitable for a variety of her DJ mixes, and commented that "all the ideas are not totally thought through, which is a good quality. It's kind of open, you can kind of finish the idea." [18]

Track listing

All tracks written by Asmus Tietchens.

Original vinyl release

Side one

  1. "In Die Zukunft" – 2:23
  2. "Miss Ann Trope" – 2:04
  3. "Die Elektrische Horde" – 2:04
  4. "Räuschlinge" – 3:59
  5. "Geisel Des Monats" – 2:30
  6. "Blutmund" – 2:23
  7. "Cretin Statique" – 2:33
  8. "Gasmaske in Blau" – 2:24

Side two

  2. "Moderne Arroganz" – 2:38
  3. "Stressmen" – 2:05
  4. "Tango Fellatino" – 2:34
  5. "Sauberland" – 2:03
  6. "Trümmerköpfe" – 2:04
  7. "Sekundentanz" – 3:31
  8. "Träumchen Am Fenster" – 2:31
  9. "Biotop" – 3:12

2003 CD release

  1. "Futurum Drei" – 4:50
  2. "Fast Food" – 3:55
  3. "In Die Zukunft" – 2:23
  4. "Miss Ann Trope" – 2:04
  5. "Die Elektrische Horde" – 2:04
  6. "Räuschlinge" – 3:59
  7. "Geisel Des Monats" – 2:30
  8. "Blutmund" – 2:23
  9. "Cretin Statique" – 2:33
  10. "Gasmaske in Blau" – 2:24
  11. "Moderne Arroganz" – 2:38
  12. "Stressmen" – 2:05
  13. "Tango Fellatino" – 2:34
  14. "Sauberland" – 2:03
  15. "Trümmerköpfe" – 2:04
  16. "Sekundentanz" – 3:31
  17. "Träumchen Am Fenster" – 2:31
  18. "Biotop" – 3:12

Personnel

Credits adapted from the original liner notes (many of the musicians are aliases of Tietchens).

Related Research Articles

Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s by psychedelic rock and pop which incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording effects and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.

Vince Clarke English synth-pop musician

Vincent John Martin, known professionally as Vince Clarke, is an English synth-pop musician and songwriter. Clarke has been the main composer and musician of the band Erasure since its inception in 1985, and was previously the main songwriter of several groups, including Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and the Assembly. In Erasure he is known for his deadpan and low-key onstage demeanour, often remaining motionless over his keyboard, in sharp contrast to vocalist Andy Bell's animated and hyperactive frontman antics.

Goldfrapp English electronic music duo

Goldfrapp are an English electronic music duo from London, formed in 1999. The duo consists of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory (synthesiser).

<i>Cluster & Eno</i> 1977 studio album by Cluster and Brian Eno

Cluster & Eno is a collaborative album by German electronic music group Cluster and English ambient musician Brian Eno. The style of this album is a collection of gentle melodies: a mixture of Eno's ambient sensibilities and Cluster's avant-garde style.

Cluster (band)

Cluster were a German musical duo consisting of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, formed in 1971 and associated with West Germany's krautrock and kosmische music scenes. Born from the earlier Berlin-based group Kluster, they relocated in 1971 into the countryside village of Forst, Lower Saxony, where they built a studio and collaborated with musicians such as Conny Plank, Brian Eno, and Michael Rother; with the latter, they formed the influential side-project Harmonia. After first disbanding in 1981, Cluster reunited several times: from 1989 to 1997, and from 2007 to 2010.

Arcane Device is the recording name of New York City-based experimental musician and electric guitarist David Lee Myers.

<i>Architecture & Morality</i> 1981 studio album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Architecture & Morality is the third studio album by English electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), released on 8 November 1981 by Dindisc. Inspired by religious music, the band sought to broaden their musical palette by utilising elaborate choral samples, the Mellotron, and other new instruments to create a more naturalistic, emotive sound. The artwork was designed by longtime OMD collaborator Peter Saville, along with Brett Wickens, while its title was derived from the book Morality and Architecture by David Watkin.

<i>Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark</i> (album) 1980 studio album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark is the self-titled debut studio album by English electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), released on 22 February 1980 by Dindisc. Recorded at the band's Liverpool studio, it showcased their minimal synth-pop style and peaked at number 27 on the UK Albums Chart. "Electricity" and "Red Frame/White Light" were released as singles; a re-recorded version of "Messages" provided OMD with their first hit in the UK, reaching number 13.

Synthesizer Electronic musical instrument

A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms, through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.

<i>The Complete On the Corner Sessions</i> 2007 box set by Miles Davis

The Complete On the Corner Sessions is a posthumous box set by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released in the US on September 25, 2007, by Columbia Records and in the UK on September 29 on Legacy Recordings. Like other Davis box sets, the included material is taken from a wider chronology of sessions than the dates which actually produced the titular album. The Complete On the Corner Sessions compiles material from 1972 through 1975 which, due to lineup changes Davis made throughout the era, features over two dozen musicians.

York House Recordings, also known as YHR or YHR Tapes, was a small British independent label which released 31 original cassettes of industrial, electronic, experimental, avant-garde, and dark ambient music between 1979 and 1983.

Asmus Tietchens

Asmus Tietchens, who also records under the monikers Hematic Sunsets and Club of Rome, is a German composer of avant-garde music. Tietchens became interested in experimental music and musique concrète as a child, and began recording sound experiments in 1965 with electronic musical instruments, synthesizers and tape loops. In the 1970s he met producer Okko Bekker, and the two formed a decades-long partnership. Peter Baumann heard a recording of Tietchens' music and offered to produce an album; the result was Nachtstücke, Tietchens' 1980 offering on Egg Records. His early recordings feature more accessible synthesized music, but beginning with Formen Letzer Hausmusik, his 1984 release for Nurse With Wound's label United Dairies, he began moving toward more abstract sound collages. He has taught acoustics in Hamburg since 1990.

Electronics in rock music

The use of electronic music technology in rock music coincided with the practical availability of electronic musical instruments and the genre's emergence as a distinct style. Rock music has been highly dependent on technological developments, particularly the invention and refinement of the synthesizer, the development of the MIDI digital format and computer technology.

Kouhei Matsunaga Musical artist

Kohei Matsunaga is an electronic musician and draughtsman born in 1978 in Osaka, Japan, currently residing in Osaka and Berlin, Germany.

<i>Zero Time</i> 1971 studio album by Tontos Expanding Head Band

Zero Time is the debut album by British-American electronic music duo Tonto's Expanding Head Band, released on 15 June 1971 by Embryo Records. The album is a showcase for TONTO, a multitimbral, polyphonic synthesiser build by the two members of the band, Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, as a developed version of the Moog III synth in 1969. The duo began producing their own music together on the synth with the intention to push the machine's abilities, and their own abilities as musicians, to the limit. Recording their compositions in New York, they approached TONTO with no pre-conceived notions and intended to make music intrinsic to the synthesiser.

<i>Remember (The Great Adventure)</i> 2004 studio album by Michael Rother

Remember is the ninth studio album by the German solo artist Michael Rother. It was released on 25 April 2004. The studio album was Rother's first since 1996 and his sole full release of material in the 2000s. It would take sixteen years till his next album. Dreaming was released in 2020.

<i>All Hours</i> 2011 studio album by Ivy

All Hours is the sixth and final studio album by American band Ivy, released by Nettwerk on September 20, 2011. Following 2005's In the Clear, the members took a hiatus from music, allowing Andy Chase and Adam Schlesinger to work on side projects and Dominique Durand and Chase to begin raising a family. After reuniting in 2008, they started work on a project exploring a new sound following concerns that their songs would become obsolete and unimaginative due to their break. All Hours features 11 songs written and produced by Chase and Schlesinger; they take influence from electropop, indie pop and synth-pop music. Unlike their previous albums, All Hours experiments more with electronic music and contains tracks reminiscent of the music from the 1980s.

Bureau B is an independent record label, music publisher and booking agency from Hamburg, Germany, founded in 2005 by Gunther Buskies as a sister label to Tapete Records. The label releases varieties of electronic, free-spirited music, with the spectrum ranging from pop to avant-garde. The label has amassed an extensive catalogue of reissues and new productions, including classics from the genre of electronic music in the 1970s and early 1980s popularly classified as Krautrock, alongside new recordings by such formative artists as Faust, Kreidler, Roedelius, Tietchens, Moebius.

<i>Music for Stowaways</i> 1981 studio album by British Electric Foundation

Music for Stowaways is the debut album by English electronic act British Electric Foundation (B.E.F.), formed by musicians Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. The album released in the United Kingdom as a limited edition cassette in March 1981 by Virgin Records, who also released an LP version of the album titled Music for Listening To later in the year with a different track list and cover art, aiming its release for export markets. The Stowaways version was originally released concurrently with Ware and Marsh's first single with Heaven 17, "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang", itself a developed version of the Music for Stowaways track "Groove Thang".

<i>Forever Alien</i> Album by Spectrum

Forever Alien is the third studio album by British space rock band Spectrum, a project led by Peter Kember under the pseudonym Sonic Boom. It was released in August 1997 by Space Age Records. After the band's preceding EP Songs for Owsley (1996) moved them away from guitar-oriented music and towards electronic music, Forever Alien furthered this approach considerably, as Kember aimed to create a predominately electronic album that sounded organic and analogue in style. The record is dominated by vintage analogue synthesizers, including the EMS VCS 3 and EMS Synthi AKS. Kember had become fascinated by the synths as he felt they presented him with more musical possibilities than guitars.

References

  1. 1 2 Henning, Venske (1981). "Alternative Musi". Pardon. 50: 57. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  2. 1 2 Bush, John. "AllMusic Biography by John Bush". AllMusic. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  3. ↑ Couture, François. "AllMusic Review by François Couture (Adventures in Sound + Nachtstücke)". AllMusic. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Leone, Dominique (29 September 2003). "Asmus Tietchens Biotop". Pitchfork. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Asmus Tietchens, "Biotop"". Brainwashed. 2003. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 Biotop (liner). Asmus Tietchens. Sky. 1981.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Couture, François. "AllMusic Review by François Couture". AllMusic. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Nickells, Kev (2 October 2013). "Asmus Tietchens – Biotop/Spät-Europa". Freq. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  9. ↑ "Popular Artists". Gramophone. 58–59: 1267. 1981. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  10. ↑ Freeman, Steve; Freeman, Alan (1996). A Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Encyclopedia of Krautrock, Kosmische Musik and Other Progressive, Experimental and Electronic Musics from Germany. p. 228. ISBN   095295060X . Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  11. ↑ Büsser, Martin (1999). Pop und Literatur. Ventil. p. 85. ISBN   9783931555061 . Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  12. ↑ "Reviews". The Wire. 257–262: 13. 2005. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  13. ↑ "Asmus Tietchens - Biotop". Forced Exposure. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  14. ↑ "Asmus Tietchens Biotop". Boomkat. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  15. 1 2 Leone, Dominique (8 September 2005). "Asmus Tietchans Spat Europa In die Nacht Litia". Pitchfork. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  16. ↑ Duguid, Brian (1995). "An interview with Asmus Tietchens". Hyperreal. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  17. ↑ Aston, Martin (2011). "The Fall This Nation's Saving Grace Review". BBC. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  18. ↑ Hutchinson, Kate (1 August 2018). "From Raw to Clean: Helena Hauff's Favourite Records". The Quietus. p. 14. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.