Berndt Friedmann, who has, in the past taken part in post-rave
ambient-dub combo Drome’s adventures, has also perpetrated
some musical crimes under the Nonplace Urban Field, Flanger
and Some More Crime banners. Burnt Friedman is yet another
guise used to injects disturbed rhythms and twisted songs
in the listeners’ subconscious.
Burnt Firendman Plays Love Songs is everything
but a sugarcoated album. In fact, Plays Love Songs
is at times highly disturbing. Fucking Long Time,
which opens the album, is a rather straightforward track,
oozing jazz and electronic. However, the voice at the
beginning of It Hurts! presages of things to
come. The song features the twisted tale of a slightly
simple seventeen-year-old young man, telling of how if
girlfriend doesn’t let him touch her breasts, and how
he was pushed from a roof and broke his arm. The background
music is as disturbed as the speech, perfectly underlining
the tragic/comic situation of the story. After a couple
of catchy, refreshing tunes, Friedmann inflicts another
blow, with the uncomfortable Tongs Of Love, backed
by a guitar and a few environmental noises. Very reminiscent
of Chris Morris’s Blue Jam, the main element
of the track is the male voice telling of a deeply sensual
experience. Sex Is Not Right, conveyed by a rather
heavily funked-up soundtrack, delves into the realms of
attraction between sexes. Twisted sex is the main subject
of this album, and Sex Working Class and Buttman,
which closes the album, are equally as unsettling as the
rest. But it would be easy to only retain this aspect
of the album and totally obliterate the fact that the
compositions are genuinely very good, as Friedmann crams
jazz, dub, rock and electronic into 45 minutes of perversity.
This album doesn’t sound like anything else around, and
it is down to the man’s talent to use good samples and
get the best out of intriguing collaborations.
The love songs played by Mr. Friedmann are unconventional
indeed, and the collection he puts together here is in
turn charming or discomforting. His compositions are unmistakably
personal, and deserve to make their way to your record
collection.
4/5 |
