Brandt Brauer Frick @ Boiler Room

Brandt Brauer Frick are unstoppable. In 2010, the German trio’s debut album, ‘You Make Me Real’, successfully fused techno and classical music. The two forms are so different – regimented rhythms and laptop production on the one hand, complex musical theory and virtuosity on the other  ‘You Make Me Real’ may have been built from classical sounds, but the result didn’t sound out of place in a minimal techno set.In 2011 Daniel Brandt, Jan Brauer and Paul Frick took their genre-defying experiment to the next level with the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble. Think of it as BBF V2.0. They’ve ditched the computers they used to arrange ‘You Make Me Real’ and expanded the band to a ten-piece so they can play handcrafted dance grooves completely live.  “The ensemble is about taking it to the next level, but it’s what we wanted to do from the start,” says Brandt.Earlier that year at the Eurosonic conference in Holland, they recreated ‘You Make Me Real’ on stage using 80 pages of sheet music per track. The result was weird, compelling and unlike anything else. Dates across Europe followed. Appearances at Coachella in April 2011 as well as shows at Glastonbury, Sonar, North Sea Jazz, Haldern Pop, Worldwide Festival Singapore, MIDEM, MUTEK Mexico and Bestival. The next album ‘Mr Machine’ sees the group reinterpret five tracks from ‘You Make Me Real’ + two cover versions — ‘Pretend’ by Emika and ‘A 606 N Rock N Roll’ by James Braun — and a completely new track.On ‘You Make Me Real’, BBS still used some effects and more synths, whereas ‘Mr. Machine’ is completely unplugged, except for the Moog synth, which is amplified through a bass guitar amp. ‘You Make Me Real’ was still ‘produced’. On ‘Mr. Machine’ there’s nothing like that at all.”The start of BBS was in 2008. Daniel and Jan are old school friends. As Scott, they made dance music, hypnotic, minimalistic, jazzy stuff with real instruments. Paul contacted them via Myspace after hearing one of their tracks. “We listened to each other’s music and liked what we heard, so decided to meet up in Berlin,” remembers Paul.Three years later, they’re making music using an opulent and unconventional instrumentation: violin, cello, harp, piano, trombone, tuba, timpani, marimba, vibraphone, drumset, various percussion and a Moog synthesizer. Daniel, Jan and Paul found the other ensemble members on the Berlin contemporary classical music scene. Most of them play in high-profile ensembles like Adapter, Kaleidoskop or Ensemble Modern, others in jazz bands like Formelwesen. On occasion, the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble also features Ninja Tune vocalist Emika — see the track ‘Pretend’.More than anything, Daniel, Jan and Paul are keen that the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble are not written off as a curiosity. “Often people focus a lot on this whole “cross-over” aspect,” says Brauer.  “Some only seem interested in how it’s made. Some reviewers perceive us as minimal techno, some as modern classical, some as nu jazz and so on. But we don’t divide the world into techno and non-techno.”

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