Burnt Friedman and Mohammad Reza Mortazavi – Yek

Nonplace

Merging Burnt Friedman‘s distinctive electronic swirl with Mohammed Reza Mortazavi‘s deftly-played tombak rhythms, the Yek EP finds the Berlin-based duo in playful mode as they bounce musical sparks off each other.

Mortazavi’s percussion swoops and dives around the melodic and textural whorls, Friedman gradually glitching things up, hints of dust and grain flickering into effulgent life among the ever-rolling groove. Unsurprisingly, this first calls to mind both Friedman’s Secret Rhythms recordings with Jaki Liebezeit and Can‘s ever-influential series of ethnological forgeries, but Yek is enough of the duo’s own creation to bring a distinct and fresh feel to proceedings.

Mortazevi has a similarly metronomic ability that holds everything together, the electronics equally allowing him to take flight above and below the unfurling forward motion. Friedman steps sidewards at times, with bass pulsations and filter squiggles giving a lateral sense of pleasantly disruptive change when he does so, though always with restraint. Blissful and often beatific, Yek is a subtly textural delight from start to finish.

-Linus Tossio-