Deflections

Recordings

“There is an élite of the anxious: the rest is the mankind”
— E. M. Cioran, Notizen 1957—1972

Fabio Perletta and Asmus Tietchens’ hermetic micro-cosmos of Deflections unfolds by exploring instability and physical decay of sound. Built upon liminal forms and atonal passages, the six near-silent pieces of the work traverse empty space by means of elementary sonic emissions and drifting nano-structures. Among sound collisions and evanescent masses, the almost immaterial yet corporeal nature of Deflections, embodies sound in its most subliminal and contradictory form.

“When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed. But if they were not in the habit of swerving, they would all fall straight down through the depths of the void, like drops of rain, and no collision would occur, nor would any blow be produced among the atoms. In that case, nature would never have produced anything”
— Lucretius, De Rerum Natura

Composed, recorded and processed by Fabio Perletta at Tokonoma Studio in Roseto degli Abruzzi, Italy and Asmus Tietchens at Audiplex Studio E in Hamburg, Germany.

Designed by Fabio Perletta at Mote Studio, Berlin.

Mastered by Asmus Tietchens.

(C) 2017 Fabio Perletta / Asmus Tietchens
(P) 2017 aufabwegen
aatp59 gema lc 01291

A special thanks to Till Kniola.

An interesting collaborative project comes at last, designed by Perletta himself, as an elegant coloured digipack. Asmus Tieschens is partner of Perletta the first experimenter from Roseto degli Abruzzi – now living in Berlin and owner of Farmacia 901. Tieschens was known by the audience as an experimental and electroacustic composer from Hamburg. As opposed to others in his group, he is an author who, in his issues, never gets lost in technical reports and methodological narrations, but in this situation underlines how his research deals with the instability and physical decay of sounds, with a lack of tones and subtle perceptions. The album is produced by Aufabwegen, a label that is not new to inventive music excursions, including in its catalogue names such as Marc Berhens, Francisco Lopez, Simon Whetman and Konrad Kratz. The main aim is to investigate empty spaces leading to the unlistened, and to silence with a meticolous action on evanescent harmony and residual structures. From the hardly distinguishable sound pads, muffled hisses and breaths emerge together with a multitude of immaterial and weak details produced by a subliminal and abstract microcosm. This kind of works always offer samples for a sensory modelling for the listeners which also occurs when contrasting volumes are explored, but with Deflections limiting the sound underneath, a certain threshold is not necessarily an example of minimalism. The unprecedented duo doesn’t seem interested in cold formalisms or aesthetic peaceful interpretations. The time has come to scan the sequences, the proportions among the parts and the succession of grainy sound emergencies. The thinned-out emissions are likely to emerge from the empty space but they have punctual accents and careful deviations that seem to work as vague and dilated compositions. They are unplanned sets built up on evanescent chains, ambiguous and weak resonances but are still able to move everyone who lets himself go against the dictatorship of volume.

Aurelio Cianciotta, Neural #58

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Everyone who comes to this website has one thing in common: they are fascinated by sound and by the seemingly inexhaustible ways of combining sounds into music. We take it for granted. We tend to see music is something organic, something that is just out there, waiting for us to be enjoyed.

But what if I told you that sound too can be fragile, unstable and challenged, just like us humans. If feels like this was the basic idea behind this cooperation between sound sculptors Fabio Perletta & Asmus Tietchens. On ‘Deflections’, they have manipulated sound into something otherworldly and strange.

The six tracks on this album are all experiments with minimal soundscapes and alien noises. With these tunes, we’re far away from anything that is conventional, unless you are one of those persons who claim that the softly droning engine of a spaceship is a musical masterpiece. The whole album is silent and tends to move to the background, even at a high volume. Perhaps, that is also it’s only flaw, it’s too silent.

But apart from that, I think ‘Deflections’ is an interesting album, one that comes highly recommended to fans of minimal ambient and sound art. Zoviet France and O Yuki Conjugate come to mind, be it in an extremely minimal approach. So, my advice? Check it out but turn the volume up. You’ll enter a world rarely explored and only for the chosen few to be enjoyed. Oh, how great it is to be one of the chosen few…

Serge Timmers, Merchants of Air

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サウンド & インスタレーション・アーティストとして、またベルリンにて様々な企画のキュレーターとしても動くFabio PerlettaがAsmus Tietchensと共演！！ 6パートに分けられた表題作[Deflection]のみの収録となっており、全く色の無い静寂且つ虚無的領域を維持し続けます。ジワジワと静かに染み込んで来る感覚が堪らないハードなアンビエント物件。

Art Into Life

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Exploraciones en un microcosmos sonoro, de formas minimalistas y atonales . Asmus Tietchens es un maestro que no necesita presentación. Fabio Perletta es un prestigioso artista que investiga el sonido como vehículo conceptual y para la estimulación sensorial , buscando una experiencia intima y estados meditativos en el oyente. Un cruce entre la electrónica pura y la música concreta en el borde de lo inaudible. Perletta ha colaborado con Richard Chartier, Yann Novak, Nicolas Bernier o France Jobin entre otros.

Rotor Discos

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The collaboration by Fabio Perletta and Asmus Tietchens seamlessly fits next to the Twin Peaks soundscapes from Dean Hurley. Of course the music on this album is not intended this way, but the effect of the quiet sustained drones is almost the same (especially when played not-too-loud in the background, as a soundtrack to your own environment): it alters the atmosphere, suggesting there are unexpected things about to happen.

“Built upon liminal forms and atonal passages, the six near-silent pieces of the work traverse empty space by means of elementary sonic emissions en drifting nano-structures.”

The two artists prove to be a perfect match, and clearly have the experience you need to create an album as restrained as this: near-silent soundscapes that describe empty spaces.

Asmus Tietchens (Hamburg) has released over 80 albums on which “he continues to explore the possibilities presented to him by specific sound sources (ranging from water sounds to pure sine wave tones)”. Fabio Perletta often crosses the boundaries between pure electronics and musique concrète, “using the sound as a vehicle for conceptual investigation and sensorial stimulation – with a deep attention to details and use of silence and near-audible sound”.

So, Twin Peaks fan or not: if you like unobtrusive, atmosphere-altering electronic drone music you must definitely check out this album!

Ambient Blog

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Severe digital minimalism now from the team of Fabio Perletta and Asmus Tietchens on Deflections (AUF ABWEGEN aatp59), six tracks of electronic purity packaged in an austere, diagrammatic package. Printed inside this anonymous cover are two external quotations, one from the classical poet Lucretius and another from the 20th-century Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran. The Lucretius excerpt comes from his only surviving work, On The Nature Of Things, and it speculates about the nature of atoms moving through a void. These citations are presumably intended to set the work in context, though they are rather oblique.

Reading Perletta’s own explanations of his work online, I’m not much wiser; phrases like “elementary sonic emissions and drifting nano-structures” don’t really help. Perletta is a serious Italian composer though, and seems to be preoccupied with investigating the nature of reality in some way. He does it through using microscopic, minimal sounds, and building sound installations. He speculates about things in nature which are visible and invisible. Deflections may be part of this grand scheme; I have this idea that somehow he’s sending wayward atoms of sound adrift in a test chamber, or sonic laboratory, and letting them drift where they may, bumping about the enclosed room until they run out of steam and stop doing whatever it is they’re doing. This is wholly nonsensical thinking on my part, but right now it’s the only way I can make sense of the phrase “[the] hermetic micro-cosmos of Deflections unfolds by exploring instability and physical decay of sound”.

Extreme minimalism and small sounds are also associated with Asmus Tietchens, so it’s not surprising to see his name assigned to this project. I’ll admit I can’t really tell what his contribution is to Deflections, and I wonder if the two of them even met up for this collaboration, as the sleeve indicates they recorded and processed their respective parts in Italy and Hamburg. I’ll hazard a guess that this is mostly Perletta’s thing and that he assembled the release, using contributions from Asmus, in line with his own conceptual framework. This is the latest in a long line of team-ups which this Italian has instigated, a list that includes names such as Giuseppe Ielasi, Mark Fell, and William Basinski.

I found Deflections an arid and joyless work. I’m prepared to believe there’s some remarkable scientific or philosophical information encoded into these cold digital emanations, but Perletta does not make it intelligible, nor is there any passion exhibited for the subject that might awaken one’s intellectual curiosity. Provisionally, I’ll file this one alongside Florian Hecker’s Speculative Solution on the shelf marked “too deep for me”. From 12th June 2017.

The Sound Projector