VIDEO: “Hugo”
To celebrate today’s release of their DJ-Kicks mix album, Berlin acoustic techno trio Brandt Brauer Frick share the video for “Hugo.” The group pooled together over 15,000 photos taken over a span of two years and stitched them together to create an intimate look at life on the road. Watch the video over at Groove, or stream it on YouTube.
The group’s DJ-Kicks mix is available now on iTunes or Amazon.
More about the release:
There’s a common thread that runs through all of Brandt Brauer Frick’s music. It is this: interesting things happen at the interface of machine and hand-made music. The Berlin trio’s 2010 album, ‘You Make Me Real’, fused techno and classical. The 2011 follow-up, ‘Mr Machine’, saw them go the whole classical-meets-club hog with a ten-piece ensemble playing dance music live. Then, earlier this year, came ‘Miami’, a darker, more song-based collection exploring the same man-machine ideas.
The Berlin trio’s installment of the DJ-Kicks series does the same thing with a mix. Not for them the algorithmic rigidity of cutting and pasting tracks together on Ableton. They recorded the mix in one day, out of hours at Berlin’s legendary Watergate club, using only vinyl and dub plates. “We didn’t want to record it in our studio or at home, mainly because we preferred an intense session with limited time,” explains Paul Frick. “That feels more like a unique situation and it enforces the tension and the necessity to do it right. Because we mixed it live there are mistakes and flaws, some rougher transitions in there. We are not super technical DJs. We like it when you hear those imprecisions because it’s human. It feels like someone is behind the mix, rather than a computer.”
It’s a hugely inventive set, ranging from the deep house of ‘Electric Alleycat’ by Theo Parrish to classic techno in the form of ‘Transition’ by Galaxy 2 Galaxy and the post-dubstep / post-drum’n’bass / post-everything of ‘Now U Know Tha Deal 4 Real’ by Machinedrum. Daniel Brandt, Jan Brauer and Paul Frick started putting the mix together with a mammoth listening session. Each member brought in 25-30 tracks. They listened to all of them and chose the ones they all agreed on. A number of tracks were re-edited, for example ‘Australaborialis’ by Inkswel, where they extended the outro, looping it up because it fitted beautifully with Theo Parrish ‘Electric Alleycat’. All the tracks that they didn’t have on vinyl (because they hadn’t been released yet) they took to a cutting room in Berlin and had dubplates made.
One of the key themes is mixing 4/4 beats with more broken rhythms, such as the aforementioned Machinedrum ‘Now U Know Tha Deal 4 Real’. “That track is really special because it reminds me of the old school stuff that 4hero did before drum’n’bass,” says Daniel Brandt. “It’s not dub step, it’s not drum’n’bass, it’s not house, it’s not anything clear, but it has a really interesting approach.” The heart of the mix is ‘Transition’ by Galaxy 2 Galaxy feat. Atlantis, the Underground Resistence techno classic, a heady mix of rippling digital hooks, synth stabs and positive mindset lyrics. “There are several vocal tracks where the message is important to us, such as Galaxy 2 Galaxy,’ says Jan Brauer. “It’s got a very existential and positive message. It expresses perfectly something that we feel but which we could never have expressed ourselves. William Onyeabor ‘Better Change Your Mind’ is another track like that. It’s very different to what we do, but the message is totally how we feel about the state of the world and politics.”
Brandt Brauer Frick
DJ-Kicks
!K7 Records
Street Date: February 25, 2014
01. Jan Jelinek – HipBird
02. Inkswel – Australaborialis
03. Theo Parrish – Electric Alleycat
04. Dollkraut – Rollercoaster *
05. William Onyeabor – Better Change Your Mind
06. Max Graef – Bummse
07. Brandt Brauer Frick – Bommel *
08. Kingdom – Stalker Ha
09. Parental Control – Feel Like / Le K – Abraz *
10. Alfabet (Awanto 3 & Tom Trago) – Lap The Music
11. Fantastic Man – Late At Night
12. Brandt Brauer Frick – Out Of Tash *
13. Galaxy 2 Galaxy feat. Atlantis – Transition
14. Peverelist – Sun Dance
15. DJ Do Bass – To Catchy
16. French Fries – White Screen
17. Chico Mann – Soul Freedom
18. James Braun & Troels Abrahamsen – Wooden Knuckles *
19. Glenn Astro – How I Miss You *
20. Philogresz – Edge
21. Bok Bok & Tom Trago – Vector
22. Cosmin TRG – Echolab Disaster *
23. MMM – Re-tics
24. Jam City – How We Relate To The Body
25. Brandt Brauer Frick – Hugo *
26. Machinedrum – Now U Know Tha Deal 4 Real
27. Thundercat – Tenfold
28. Dean Blunt – Galice
* exclusively produced for DJ-Kicks
K7311LP
A1. Brandt Brauer Frick – Hugo (DJ-Kicks)
A2. Glenn Astro – How I Miss You *
A3. Piano Tool
B1. Galaxy 2 Galaxy feat. Atlantis – Transition
B2. Le K – Abraz *
B3. Percussion Tool
C1. Dollkraut – Rollercoaster *
C2. Parental Control – Feel Like
D1. James Braun & Troels Abrahamsen – Wooden Knuckles *
D2. Cosmin TRG – Echolab Disaster *
* exclusively produced for DJ-Kicks
Facebook – www.facebook.com/pages/Brandt-
Label – www.k7.com