Fließgewässer is the alias of Spain-based artist Philipp Heinzelbecker, who became part of the OM family somewhen in autumn 2019, when OM-stalwarts Hager/Kaputt, the overwhelmingly great William Luke Valerio and Fließgewässer shared a gig. A short power breakdown that evening killed Heinzel’s synthesizer, which was his main source of sound. He then started to throw himself into a freestyle set with machines lent by the other musicians – and he dove headfirst into a slowly-building, neo-baroque organ impression of melancholic beauty and an emotional openness that affected the whole room.

This was a fine example of how Fließgewässer functions – Heinzelbäcker incorporates what surrounds him and transforms it into sound. „Firat | Dîjla“ works just as that. An impromptu session with Marta Morant on clarinet and Nicolas Dobson on drums that started after watching a documentary on the ruthless building of dams in south-east Anatolia by Turkey’s demagogic president Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, with additional synth work overdubbed afterwards, turned into a stream of free-flowing new age sounds with references to anatolian folk music popping up here and there, tender percussion improvs and refined clarinet expressions.

The sole track on the B-side of the tape – „Below the stork’s nest“ – is a sombre elegy, alternating between an endless dulcimer rite, surfacing field recordings, a trumpet resembling the cornet work of Cosey Fanni Tutti and: a violin. The original version of „Firat | Dîjla“ featured a lot of quotes from the BBC-produced documentary „So Water is Turkey’s Oil“. Shying away from the fear of copyright infringements, we asked Heinzel to remove them; about half a day later, in true Fließgewässer fashion, he sent a whole new set of files with him playing a deranged violin instead of the original quotes. That was the final point, the being-struck-by-lightning-moment when we knew this one was perfectly finished. Glimpses of Hassell’s fourth-world music spelled out over european post-industrial music like Coil, and, within the flushes of deeply honest consternation which interweave the whole recording, a very political set of songs.