Burnt Friedman - Bokoboko

The uneven types of rhythm, which provide the specific oscillation on which all the tracks are based, in principle obey all the components: melodies, noises, monophone sequences and dub echoes inserted into pre-sketched, programmed basic tracks. The tracks of the current production, like those in Secret Rhythms, Friedman’s live-and-studio project with Jaki Liebezeit, must be viewed as intermediate phases in an on-going process. They are not finalized, completed pieces that permit no further alteration, nor do they correspond to the idea of an original with unmistakable identity. On the contrary: permutability is their salient feature, and they are built according to a plan that follows natural laws.

The first two Flanger albums (1997–1999, with Atom™) and Burnt Friedman’s Just Landed (1999) and Con Ritmo (2000) still aimed to juxtapose fully programmed, electronically generated productions (“reality constructions”) with the universally known production model involving instruments that were actually played. The “authentic” sound of the programmed music revealed the inherent artificiality of the “real” productions. In Secret Rhythms, and now Bokoboko, it is no longer a question of mixing, simulating or faking genres that already exist – the aim is to invent music that is extra-territorial, non-national, non-place.
Freed from the search for identity, from the burden of soloists striving to be expressive, from the pressure of avant-garde dictates, the music discovers the magic moments during the repetition of musical patterns based on the material that comes into being. For example, moments when the background unexpectedly becomes the foreground, like an optical illusion, when patterns considered to be unalterable suddenly appear to stand on their heads, or evolve in a wholly new direction. Such effects presuppose the existence of something active between transmitter and receiver: the understanding of a musical message that is also dependent on the listening, and can change in the course of the listening. These are the traces of the process in the course of which the musician took decisions in the capacity of a listener at the same time.
The ten tracks on Bokoboko, as well as the four exclusive tracks on the preceding EP Zen’Aku, were recorded and mixed in Friedman’s Berlin studio during the past three years.

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