Burnt Friedman
Making waves with rattling rimshots and gargantuan bass, Cologne resident Burnt Friedman (aka Bernd Friedmann) has been shaking up dub-wise sensi-bilities with an album recorded at a secret hideaway off the New Zealand coast.
I have this theory that musician’s speech patterns often reflect the nature of their music. It’s just a theory of course, but Autechre speak in tandem, and in tangents, Plaid are in turn unassuming, effervescent, and mysterious, and Burnt Friedman is kind of odd, managing to give the idea of very considered responses, whilst at the same time having his head in several different places. Even though we speak over the phone, I can still sense the wry smile of a man who, although having just released a great contemporary dub album, a very considered response to the inspirational work of 70s dub warriors whose work has remained unmatched for decades, still thinks what he does, and what surrounds it, is always ever so slightly amusing.
The Nu Dub Players, that Burnt worked with on this great album, Just Landed, are described to me as such: ‘Crucial Guenther’ – brain surgeon of boom and bass bandito from Berlin, ‘DJ Booth’ – and his phenomenal home made effects in a suitcase rig, ‘Bernie The Bolt’ – the Golden Shot of drums’n’perc and finally ‘Cousin Of The Sausage Smearer’ – gat twanger and meat meister extraordinaire.
Burnt has, for a good few years now, been probing away at the boundaries of experimental electronic music, under various guises, the better known of which are Drome, NonPlace Urban Field, and last year's mighty Flanger collaboration with Atom Heart, the results of which were released on N Tone. Just Landed has found it’s spiritual home in ~scape records, the baby of Stefan Betke’s minimally boombastic Pole, and a righteous place for one of the best modern interpretations of the great dub tradition in recent years. Managing to suspend my disbelief that the Nu Dub Players actually exist, a theory that you will understand given the above descriptions, I simply ask Burnt how they met up and how it all worked...
“We all met in New Zealand over the last three years. The second time I went out there, I had taken some rough media of songs, and I was looking for players to interpret the midi files in their own way. I gathered different tracks that we made on top of those rough arrangements. They didn't work like songs in a traditional sense, because I wanted to do more hard disk edits and arrangements afterwards, and I didn't just want to record jams. Even though I rearranged the recordings, using maybe one of ten takes, I think the flow that goes with the music, and the humour even, of having people in the studio spontaneously playing instruments, was very important, whereas with the usual sequenced music – most of the music I have recorded before this has been sequenced music – it is hard to achieve that flow, and the sequenced thing can’t keep up with the tempo of the ideas that come up with live players.”
Consciously setting out to make a dub record in the tradition of the genre, whilst at the same time attempting to expand its boundaries, Burnt has truly captured the spirit of the past in order to inform it’s future. Like hip hop, dub will always take a nod to it’s past, and work within the traditions, the skills, and techniques that make it what it is, and in the same way, it’s how those traditions are interpreted and mutated by pioneers like Burnt that maintain the style as a valid creative form. “I was so excited by the 70s reggae productions, because on the one hand, the precise contribution of the rhythm section, but at the same time the hi tech work of a remixer, it was like the best marriage. There are the two opposite sides of what music is, the acoustic side because of the true value of music, whereas electronic music has the notion of being bloodless, repetitive sound experiments. With dub reggae they didn’t care about those opposites at all because they succeeded in mixing those elements together in perfect harmony. When I set out to make the album, I was very aware that with sequenced music, it wouldn't be achievable.”
Checking in at a minimal thirty six minutes, Just Landed’s size belies it’s length, and, as the saying goes, girth brings mirth. The album took three years to record with over twenty compositions written, and unbelievably, people have questioned Burnt over the short length of the record, like it mattered. Just Landed inhabits it's own time zone, where minutes and seconds cease to exist, let alone matter, where great walls of bass echo like their influences, the percussive spontaneity moulded into roughshod skank rhythms by Burnt’s subtle programming, edits, and always entertaining electronic randomness. It has the solid power of African Headcharge with creative joy of Lee Perry at his most willful. I ask Burnt why dub still holds works of over thirty years ago as it's standards. “I think dub as a working method has found friends in all genres, in terms of sound concerned working methods, but I think dub as a style hasn’t made that much progress. The early work of African Headcharge and Dub Syndicate, or On U Sound really excited me, but there have been lots of records that didn’t strike me – you had to look at 70s records by The Scientist, and still there are no equivalents”
As we speak Burnt is preparing for another stint in New Zealand, getting together his traveling studio kit, and I wonder how his different working environments affect the music he makes. His Nonplace Urban Field material, entailing a more electronic groove, would largely have been written in Cologne, whilst the bizarre experiments of Flanger material was recorded at Atom Heart’s house in Chile. I mention to Burnt a vague recollection of an article on Lee Perry where someone recalled the importance of his studio environment as essential in creating his sound. “Yes, these different environments are very helpful for my work, absolutely. I’m not taking myself too seriously anymore, and in foreign countries you always have to start from scratch. You know nobody knows you, and you create a new human being. Everything concerning your personality is reset again, and can be brought up another way. All the hypes and media mutterings, for example, are so very far away and you don’t matter that much in New Zealand. In Chile, people don’t really care that much about world media, and this makes it quite healthy. I didn’t know that this would happen when I started going to these places, but it has been very important in my working because before this I hadn’t really left the studio that much.”
Burnt’s enterprises are probably set to keep him out of the studio a bit more as well, with the setting up of his own label, Non Place, of which Burnt states ‘everything is possible’. With another Flanger album just mastered ready for release, again on N Tone, in July, and a Latin jazz inspired Non Place album sometime this year, Burnt also hopes to put out a long finished Non Place LP that was originally scheduled for release on Sweden’s Dot label before they experienced some difficulties. “That is the Non Place album that should have come out some time ago”, he mentions, “I may call it Fucking Long Time”. There’s that wry smile again.
The Nu Dub Players, that Burnt worked with on this great album, Just Landed, are described to me as such: ‘Crucial Guenther’ – brain surgeon of boom and bass bandito from Berlin, ‘DJ Booth’ – and his phenomenal home made effects in a suitcase rig, ‘Bernie The Bolt’ – the Golden Shot of drums’n’perc and finally ‘Cousin Of The Sausage Smearer’ – gat twanger and meat meister extraordinaire.
Burnt has, for a good few years now, been probing away at the boundaries of experimental electronic music, under various guises, the better known of which are Drome, NonPlace Urban Field, and last year's mighty Flanger collaboration with Atom Heart, the results of which were released on N Tone. Just Landed has found it’s spiritual home in ~scape records, the baby of Stefan Betke’s minimally boombastic Pole, and a righteous place for one of the best modern interpretations of the great dub tradition in recent years. Managing to suspend my disbelief that the Nu Dub Players actually exist, a theory that you will understand given the above descriptions, I simply ask Burnt how they met up and how it all worked...
“We all met in New Zealand over the last three years. The second time I went out there, I had taken some rough media of songs, and I was looking for players to interpret the midi files in their own way. I gathered different tracks that we made on top of those rough arrangements. They didn't work like songs in a traditional sense, because I wanted to do more hard disk edits and arrangements afterwards, and I didn't just want to record jams. Even though I rearranged the recordings, using maybe one of ten takes, I think the flow that goes with the music, and the humour even, of having people in the studio spontaneously playing instruments, was very important, whereas with the usual sequenced music – most of the music I have recorded before this has been sequenced music – it is hard to achieve that flow, and the sequenced thing can’t keep up with the tempo of the ideas that come up with live players.”
Consciously setting out to make a dub record in the tradition of the genre, whilst at the same time attempting to expand its boundaries, Burnt has truly captured the spirit of the past in order to inform it’s future. Like hip hop, dub will always take a nod to it’s past, and work within the traditions, the skills, and techniques that make it what it is, and in the same way, it’s how those traditions are interpreted and mutated by pioneers like Burnt that maintain the style as a valid creative form. “I was so excited by the 70s reggae productions, because on the one hand, the precise contribution of the rhythm section, but at the same time the hi tech work of a remixer, it was like the best marriage. There are the two opposite sides of what music is, the acoustic side because of the true value of music, whereas electronic music has the notion of being bloodless, repetitive sound experiments. With dub reggae they didn’t care about those opposites at all because they succeeded in mixing those elements together in perfect harmony. When I set out to make the album, I was very aware that with sequenced music, it wouldn't be achievable.”
Checking in at a minimal thirty six minutes, Just Landed’s size belies it’s length, and, as the saying goes, girth brings mirth. The album took three years to record with over twenty compositions written, and unbelievably, people have questioned Burnt over the short length of the record, like it mattered. Just Landed inhabits it's own time zone, where minutes and seconds cease to exist, let alone matter, where great walls of bass echo like their influences, the percussive spontaneity moulded into roughshod skank rhythms by Burnt’s subtle programming, edits, and always entertaining electronic randomness. It has the solid power of African Headcharge with creative joy of Lee Perry at his most willful. I ask Burnt why dub still holds works of over thirty years ago as it's standards. “I think dub as a working method has found friends in all genres, in terms of sound concerned working methods, but I think dub as a style hasn’t made that much progress. The early work of African Headcharge and Dub Syndicate, or On U Sound really excited me, but there have been lots of records that didn’t strike me – you had to look at 70s records by The Scientist, and still there are no equivalents”
As we speak Burnt is preparing for another stint in New Zealand, getting together his traveling studio kit, and I wonder how his different working environments affect the music he makes. His Nonplace Urban Field material, entailing a more electronic groove, would largely have been written in Cologne, whilst the bizarre experiments of Flanger material was recorded at Atom Heart’s house in Chile. I mention to Burnt a vague recollection of an article on Lee Perry where someone recalled the importance of his studio environment as essential in creating his sound. “Yes, these different environments are very helpful for my work, absolutely. I’m not taking myself too seriously anymore, and in foreign countries you always have to start from scratch. You know nobody knows you, and you create a new human being. Everything concerning your personality is reset again, and can be brought up another way. All the hypes and media mutterings, for example, are so very far away and you don’t matter that much in New Zealand. In Chile, people don’t really care that much about world media, and this makes it quite healthy. I didn’t know that this would happen when I started going to these places, but it has been very important in my working because before this I hadn’t really left the studio that much.”
Burnt’s enterprises are probably set to keep him out of the studio a bit more as well, with the setting up of his own label, Non Place, of which Burnt states ‘everything is possible’. With another Flanger album just mastered ready for release, again on N Tone, in July, and a Latin jazz inspired Non Place album sometime this year, Burnt also hopes to put out a long finished Non Place LP that was originally scheduled for release on Sweden’s Dot label before they experienced some difficulties. “That is the Non Place album that should have come out some time ago”, he mentions, “I may call it Fucking Long Time”. There’s that wry smile again.
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