Formen Letzter Hausmusik

German electronic musician Asmus Tietchens spent the late ‘70s and early ‘80s exploring electronic pop, on albums like Biotop, and working with Kosmische Musik artists – he’s a guest on the Cluster & Eno album, for example. But the release of Formen Letzter Hausmusik, on Nurse With Wound’s United Dairies label, signalled a shift in approach for Tietchens. Compiling archival material from the late ‘60s and ‘70s with a clutch of new compositions, this album is a more rigorously experimental, ascetic experience – Tietchens tends towards grabbing hold of one idea or sound source and exploring it in some depth; the end results share some sympathies with nascent ‘industrial music,’ but are more clearly engaged with the explorations of electro-acoustic music: patient eviscerations of instrumental tonalities; clang, clatter and scrape; emptied spaces and resonating reverb.