| November 2008 |
|
Feature in french magazine MCD (Musiques et cultures digitales) click below for unedited english script Burnt Friedman in MCD, Musiques Et Cultures Digitales, November 20081/ Burnt Friedman, your are now a well known artist and a pionnier in the electronic (and live electronic) music scene. Could you tell us how – and when - do you start to work on this field ? When I started making and recording music in 1978 I have always improvised. Whenever the recording was engaged the player, or players forced themselves to get the first take right, since nothing could be edited anymore. Electronic tools and all sorts of instruments were engaged, i didn´t make a difference between those tools, because each application required it s individual set up and treatment, there was no general borderline between electronic, electric or amplified and acoustic. However, it must have been at around 1982 when more machines came into play obliterating the group spirit by increasing singular activities in the rehearsal room. I turned away from pure drumming towards production and programming. As a consequence, by moving over to Cologne in 1993, I decided to run a studio but no rehearsal room which unfortunately meant to stop making loud music, but more often lean upon a mixing desk. People consider me an electronic specialist but in fact, I have always incorporated all kinds of sound sources and did not focus solely on programming. It would make more sense to consider me a pioneer in ruining such categories, like electronic/improvised or whatever cliche is at hand. As an artist I may have succeeded once the problem that my music states, continues to be a problem. 2/ You used to work under a variety of different moniker. Back in the days it was Toxh., Some More Crime, Drome, “NUF” for Nonplace Urban Field. More recently, Flanger with Uwe Schmidt as Atom™, The Nu Dub Players, and on your own name… Why do you need so many identities ? As opposed to paintings and their creators, Music and their creating characters usually appear artificial, the musical product is a reality construction, entirely coherent even without its real creators. One of the problems that my musical projects state is the impossibility to distinguish between the instrument sources, often they are either played by machine or human. The origin of the music itself is unclear. For the music, it doesn´t make sense to pose such questions, because an instrument player can always play like the music requires to be played: mechanical or loose,....and furthermore a machine can be programmed in either ways, too. It´s only that in our musical conditioning, in our conventions we were educated to identify with a real person represented by the music. In fact, emotion doesn´t exist in music, neither do real people exist in music, but music can trigger it. 3/ Each moniker coined with a kind of different music, mainly electronic music, but today you return to something more organic, more specifically analogic, with real instruments. Why ? see 1 4/ Are, your last albums as Burnt Friedman (I think about First Night Forever, Con Ritmo or Can't Cool) explore a large spectrum, from jazz to world music, dub and funk. What pleased you today in these kind of music ? These genres are starting points, I take a cliche that i am attracted by and alienate it by following my own paths. Once I have set the formal core structure - often it is the rhythm -, it becomes visible as genre, but also a certain Friedman touch becomes obvious. Finally, i m hoping to ridicule and obliterate genres in general, because what stays on mind is never the perfect tune which incorporates all aspects of a genre, but the creator, who imposed his own ideas into that genre. Music that survives is music that does not match a genre in an obvious way, but digresses from it and goes somewhere else,...and of course, in the best case, songs are complete disconnected from impersonal tags. Hence, what is always needed in music making is personality and resistance. 5/ A lot of people who well knows your music, said there is a real “Burnt Friedman’s sound”. What do you think about this opinion ? yes, I think it is a must. But don´t ask me how it works, I guess it is because I do not have a clear sounding strategy before I start composing, I let things happen. I look back upon a production routine since 1978, that means I don´t have to think anymore about how I would like something to sound. Only it has to have a depth. 6/ So, Secret Rhythm 3, is your third collaboration with the famous Can former and drummer, Jaki Liebezeit. Could you tell us, how - and when - start this collaboration ? I gave him a call in February 2000 because I received a concert offering for a Cologne Music Festival. This came at a time, when I turned away from pure club music towards a more live orientated music. I knew that Jaki and me had something in common, at least the interest in uncommon grooves. We got together, listened to the sequences that I had played live the years before. According to his very special drum kit I needed to program new, appropriate sequences. These sequences became the blueprints for the record "Secret Rhythms"; they are still audible as percussive backdrop or rhythmic textures/noises, although electric guitars, etc. have been added. 7/ Could you define each albums recorded with him in few words? I see it as an evolution from the Jazz influenced SR1 towards something new, that to date has incorporated Dub as well as Techno, but in its formal structure has more in common with outer-European, traditional music than with Jazz. With number three we re at a point where the studio product does reflect the live playing more, whereas the two albums before were predominantly defined by studio post production and editing. Now we benefit from our increasing routine and endless exercise playing these rhythms, so that the instrument tracks -each of the strokes - are actually felt, as well as placed. 8/ For Secret Rhythm 3, your newsletter talk about fluidity and cyclicity, and this is obvious in this volume, how do you work together on this one ? Who imposing what and to whom? Do you jam together or what ? Of course we jam together. It is the basis. Without permanent practice we wouldn´t be able to play these grooves together. Sometimes it is one of Jaki´s grooves that fuel further compositional progressions, or it is one of my sequences that I outline in the studio and bring to a rehearsal. On the other hand, we do still explore rhythms that we started with 7 years ago. Such grooves have enormous potential for new interpretations each time we improvise, or I update the sequences on the computer so that some pieces can stay open. 9/ What is your personal opinion on the music business and the music scene actually ? We always heard about difficulties, but you seems to choose a total independence. How is this possible today ? How does it work ? In my opinion, it has become impossible to refer to such topics in a general way. What is the music scene ? To me it incorporates all global musical developments at present ! What eIse ? I don´t see ourselves belonging to this or that scene. We do have the whole on mind when we talk about music, as we have the internet in front of us, we should also consider to have a total perspective on music. These days, in the western hemisphere producers aim at more or less: retro - or recycling music that has been invented during the past 60 years. It seems that ambitions to resist the current style reproductions have vanished. Most music channels regurgitate their successful recipes from the most fruitful historical exploitation phase during the eighties. As companies don´t invest into new artists that much anymore, adventurous music plays elsewhere. 10/ Burnt Friedman, as human you a kind of mysteries. Where do you live today ? In Germany, New Zealand or … ? Does the place where you live has an influence on your music? I do live in Germany. Regarding influences in general, there is nothing that has not an influence on the music, yet these influences aren´t necessarily audible in the music. When listening to music from all parts of the world I am certainly more under a direct musical influence than by my home country. 11/ I don’t know if you are agree with me but we saw a return of the cerebral, difficult, or “intelligent”, music of the 90’s actually, with the reprint and reedit of the 3 first Pole (Stefan Betke’s project), all the Gas album and some Basic Channel and Monolake imprint. How do you explain this little revival of the 90’s electronic music today ? If you say, to me it is a revival, that´s fine with me. To me , I don´t think about music in terms like this. Some music will always survive, like some artpieces do for the same reason. One can say that Van Gogh has a popular phase right now, exhibitions with long cues at the entrance, but for the art discourse Van Gogh has always been of such importance. |