Spät-Europa

Asmus Tietchens' second effort for the label Sky was his quirkiest and most immediately pleasurable. Released the previous year, Biotop worked as a blueprint for Spät-Europa, while the next LPs will gradually abandon its lightness in favor of thicker textures and darker music. Tietchens' art was evolving quickly in the early '80s, but with all of his Sky LPs he was attempting a new form of instrumental electro-pop. On this one he truly succeeds. The original LP featured 20 pieces, each one two-minutes-long, give or take a few seconds. The melodies are generally funny and inventive, the drum machine spastic and slightly cheesy (the slow cha cha in "Lourdes Extra"), although the composer varies moods, tempi and voices. The most cheerful tunes come very close to Perrey-Kingsley-type ditties, while the more disquieting ones are full of strangely mutating sounds. But they all rely on rhythm and melody, they all feature different synthesizer sounds, and they all go straight to the point. Highlights include the anthemic title track (opening the album with a church choir, the only non-synthesized sound on the album), the highly danceable "Größenwarnung" and "Schöne Dritte Welt," and eerie "Epitaph," the original LP closer. The German label Die Stadt reissued Spät-Europa in 2004 as volume three in its Asmus Tietchens series. This new edition features two bonus tracks, slightly longer pieces taken from a cycle the composer was working on while recording this album and which he dropped once its structure was decided. There are probably more ideas in Spät-Europa (a one-man project) than in all of Tangerine Dream's recorded output of the '80s. That's why it remains a must-listen for electronic music enthusiasts. ~ François Couture