Burnt Friedman Just Landed CD - Import

Full performer name: Burnt Friedman & The New Dub Players.
Burnt Friedman & The New Dub Players: Burnt Friedman (programming); Cousin Of The Sausage Smearer (moutharp, guitar); "Crucial" Guenther (strings, bass); DJ Booth (keyboards, turntables); Bernie "The Bolt" (drums, percussion).
Includes liner notes by Pete Antonio.
The German obsession with dub music is never-ending. From the ultra low-wave purity of Rhythm & Sound to the jazz-highlighted downtempo of the Compost label, the rich reverb adventure of the island groove permeates much of the country's broader dance music culture. With a long history of releases under many names, most notably with musical and cultural shape-shifter Atom Heart as Flanger, this release marks Friedman's first complete immersion into the dub sound. But while many of Friedman's peers craft their waves of bass exclusively from their machines, he assembled the Nu Dub Players, a group of accomplished musicians, to develop the tunes upon which he carefully lays his studio trickery. The difference can be best heard in the percussion, as drummer Bernie the Bolt gingerly snaps rim shots and snare taps on "The Big Black Other" as well as the title track. His loose-gripped attack provides a constantly changing snare pattern that assures that the steady bass patterns never lead to monotony. Friedman's own participation as producer and engineer is perfectly subtle, with the instrumentation never becoming lost in overbearing waves of effects. The result is rootsy dub that is aquatic and otherworldly, without ever losing its acoustic sound. ~ Joshua Glazer
~scape, the label managed by Berlin's Stefan Betke (Pole), is perpetrating a unique variant of digital dub. Betke's hand-selected producers may have traded the deft slider and fader tricks of the early Jamaican masters for hard-disc tweaks and programming dexterity. But they're not merely keeping the spirit of dub alive; they're also purposefully rewiring the mad science of the version for the age of the digital edit.
JUST LANDED catches Cologne-based digi-dub maestro Bern'd Friedmann (Drome, Nonplace Urban Field, Flanger) romping in green New Zealand with antipodean allies the Nu Dub Players. Crucial Guenther's bass is the bottom line here, providing the rock-steady seismic undertow that buoys the crew's piping, old-school-Kingston melodies and expertly integrated nu-school digital mischief. DJ Booth's trippy turntable effects, Bernie the Bolt's crafty drumming, and Friedmann's constant production tampering send the dream-paced JUST LANDED skanking down the daffiest of digi-dub detours. And when dubwise heritage, high spirits, and microprocessor monkeyshines meet, as they do so vividly in "Hut Selector," "Cassock Attack," "Railway Palace, Melbourne," and "I Shot the Fashion Victim," it all makes for a memorable, marvelously musical mixing-desk melee.Q (4/00, p.92) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...eschews aggression for simmering minimalist...dub patterns....Genre stereotypes are all present...but Friedman's is a post-rock version of dub..."
Alternative Press (5/00, p.88) - 4 out of 5 - "...The sounds and textures employed here resonate as products of contemporary electronic-music culture....Friedman comes up with a glorious exploration of dub-space, hyper-colorized for the new century..."
The Wire (3/00, p.47) - "...He's created a light but stealthily experimental piece of electronic pop..."