The slightly sardonic title nods at a playful notion of just what could be taken to be traditional music these days, in central Europe or elsewhere. Does the music have to be of a certain age or place, and is its essence somehow fixed?
If so, then on Musical Traditions In Central Europe, Burnt Friedman asserts from his Berlin vantage point that the addition of dubwise electronica and avant-garde sound sculpting is now as established in his particular neck of the European landscape as any accordion-bashing, oompah-lurching and fiddle-scraping might be (wonderful as all those forms can be in their own right, to be sure).
Friedman’s thesis is explored though ten tracks across four sides of vinyl of typically inventive and largely instrumental compositions that tie his signature full-spectrum electronic dub to a shifting palette of percussion and rhythm that together take off in directions, east, north, south and west before refolding in on themselves. The psychogeographical nature of tradition, Friedman’s or anyone else’s, finds expression in the recursively coiling percussion that is as redolent of Köln in 1972 as it might be further back in – or from the future sounds of — the Congo or Kingston; interestingly, while “Moslemschleier” is dedicated to the late Bryn Jones, its electronically-disturbed but ultimately languid motion bears little resemblance to the harsher sounds of Muslimgauze. On Musical Traditions In Central Europe, Friedman’s synthesis of sampler with acoustic instrumentation is on particularly fine form, and at times (for example on the gliding polyrhythms of “Unbehagen In Der Natur”) it feels like Friedman’s old friend and collaborator Jaki Liebezeit is joining in posthumously on a number that weaves an intricate web of eloquently abstracted texture and groove. It’s not even particularly necessary to pin down any one track as being a stand-out number in an album that deserves listening to as a flickering, brightly sparking whole.Densely constructed sequencer blocks merge effortlessly with soundscapes that tug and turn from the shimmering Brazillian Portuguese vocals from Lucas Santtana and Daniel Schröter‘s easy basslines on “Berlin, A Cidade Que Não Morreu”, then swerve effortlessly back into the filtered liquid grooves once more, passing through the smoother pastures of mellow jazzwise dubbing on “Sky Speech” for the conclusion, completed niftily by Hayden Chisholm‘s relaxed reeds playing.
-Antron S Meister-
