"Comes on 180 gram vinyl. While Asmus Tietchens planned to head off "into the future" ("In die Zukunft") with Biotop (1981), Spät-Europa witnesses his arrival. Released on Sky Records in 1982, the second album in the "Zeitzeichen" phase not only continued in the style of its predecessor, it managed to refine it a little more precisely. Spät-Europa also conveys a banefully distorted pseudo-pop soundscape of disjointed rhythms and oblique melodies, defined by nervous pulses, cool alacrity and croaking toots; tongue-in-cheek it most certainly is, but the musical arrangement again affirms its own identity. Here, shadowy, rumbling industrial elements cut into the neon-colored pieces, indicative of the artist's parallel lines of development. What is new on Spät-Europa is a greater concentration of form, concise and pointed in the sense of musical economy. Tietchens sought to accentuate this aspect even more acutely, but lacked the technical means to ensure that each of the "miniatures" lasted exactly two minutes. Nevertheless, he only missed his ideal target by a few seconds here and there. The concept of Biotop as an album of 20 tracks two minutes long recalls the Residents' Commercial Album (1980) which contains 40 tracks, each a minute in length -- although these were designed to be played in groups of three in order to create a regular "pop song." Tietchens does not go that far, but he shares the musical, metatextual and humorous sensibilities of the American band, having "organized crusades" for their albums at this time. Traces of their influence may be discernible, but Tietchens has placed them in an entirely new context. Like Biotop, Spät-Europa finishes with an emphatically unwieldy piece, the artist passing comment on himself perhaps. "Epitaph" introduces a shrill warning tone, joined by nerve-shattering, serrating sounds and ominous screams; piano tones subsequently soften the impact as quiet approaches. But the headstone etched in readiness to mark his musical career proved unnecessary -- before the year was out, Günter Körber had requested a further album for his Sky label. This would be the opus entitled In die Nacht." - Bureau B .
After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.
This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).
Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.
Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.
Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
