The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble - Bop (Daniel Brandt/Jan Brauer/Paul Friedrich Frick)
From the album "Mr. Machine" (2011)
Label: !K7 Records
The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble's website.
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The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble
If you think the history of music has been a continuous evolutionary process down through the centuries, you are wrong! A recent example of a completely unexpected musical mutation is the German trio The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble, which grew out of a jazz-influenced dance group formed by Daniel Brandt and Jan Brauer, before they teamed up with Paul Frick, who studied classical music at the Berlin University of the Arts. The trio represents a serious effort to combine classical music and techno.
What could easily have been an artistic disaster turned out to be quite the opposite, with a now well established reputation as a live band. The trio explores new aspects of classical instruments such as piano and percussion, clearly inspired by modern composers like John Cage and Steve Reich.
“Bop”
This fascinating recording is mainly based on acoustic instruments with noises, overtones and even some bass notes with a character that you normally don’t get exposed to from “Techno” and related “Electronica”. “Bop” displays the influence of John Cage from the very first notes. The fundamental elements of this complex sound image may seem familiar, but the piano and other classical acoustic instruments have been tweaked with things like screws and pieces of rubber to expand their possibilities.
What makes “Bop” accessible to the young techno generation is an ingenious mix of repeated patterns closely associated with composer Steve Reich and basic techno elements. One could label this “Techno Unplugged”, but that does not do justice to the ensemble’s accomplishment.
