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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