FELIX KUBIN & ASMUS TIETCHENS

Senderkennungen marks the first ever collaboration between Hamburg veterans of sound art Asmus Tietchens and Felix Kubin, whose friendship began in the early 1990ies. The double album collects 25 original „Senderkennungen“ and their artistic deformation and further processing.

Long wave, mid wave, short wave and ultra short wave – long since disappeared radio waves in forgotten ethers, where lost souls linger on a quest for a music that so far did not exist and essentially cannot exist. They don’t search for cosmic harmony – this is old news – but long for sounds beyond the spheres. Felix Kubin and Asmus Tietchens, corner stones of sound art, are united in the decades long fight for a music of the after tomorrow. With this album they have tried to help those lost souls. In order to make radio stations acoustically recognizable they need a so called station ID. This audible signal is synonimous to a visible logo. Both logo and station ID create identities. The German word for station ID is „Senderkennung“.
For the album Felix Kubin composed a series of unique Senderkennungen - each ca. 5 seconds long – which have been commissioned by various radio stations, who where in need of a station ID or were looking to relaunch their existing acoustic branding. Most of these miniature compositions are tonal but some verge towards an atonal or noisy character. Time and again Kubin and I discussed the possibility of creating pieces out of these ultra compressed and short Senderkennungen. This was realized for the album in applying the rule of keeping Kubin’s original musical material recognizable while at the same time using any form of manipulation, modification, stretching, shortening or expanding in the development of the new pieces. One limitation: Those new pieces should not be longer than three minutes each. From these new works Kubin and Tietchens chose a selection which can now be heard on their album “Senderkennungen“.
Asmus Tietchens

Felix Kubin
Felix Kubin is one of the most eclectic performers and composers in today’s contemporary electronic music scene. At the age of 12 he recorded his first sound experiments on a four-track-machine in the pioneering days of the home-recording era. From that moment onwards his universe has been expanding continuously and today comprtises of futuristic pop, experimental radio plays electroacoustic music, lecture performances and compositions for orchestra. He runs his own Gagarin Records label and is one of the founders con curators of the inter-disciplinary Papiripar festival in Hamburg. In 2010 the english music magazine THE WIRE ran a cover story on Felix Kubin. Since 1998 Kubin released many concept albums and played concerts worldwide (MoMA PS1, Sonar, Transmediale and CTM, Unsound, Wien Modern, Märzmusik, MIT Theatre Arts, Présences électroniques and Ars_Elctronica amongst others). He navigates seemlessly between high-brow arts and subculture performing ion clubs as well as concert halls, because his main interest lays in the shifting of contexts and expectations. The french film maker Marie Losier directed a phantasmagoric film portrait about Kubin which premiered at the 2019 Locarno Film Festival.

Asmus Tietchens
Tietchens was born in Hamburg in 1947. Since 1975 he has been working as an independent musician; in 1980 he released his first solo record Nachtstücke. After producing a series of rhythmic and harmonic albums for the Sky label in the early 1980s he released his first industrial record Formen letzter Hausmusik in 1984 on United Dairies. Here Tietchens articulated his musical interests clearly: everyday noises were treated and at times deformed beyond recognition and placed into new contexts. Until now Asmus Tietchens has released more than 80 albums on international labels where he continues to explore the posibilities presented to him by specific sound sources (ranging from water sounds to pure sine wave tones). He has a more rhythm-oriented fake band project called Hematic Sunsets. Tietchens’ work is rooted in a deeply sceptic gesture, marked by frequent quotes from the works of philosopher E.M. Cioran on his album covers. Asmus Tietchens is very outspoken about the
state of affairs in noise music and contributes essays on the subject in various publications. He has been awarded with the prestigious Karl Sczuka Prize of the Südwestrundfunk (SWR) twice: in 2003 for his work Heidelberger Studien 1-6 and in 2006 for Trois Dryades. He lives and works in Hamburg.