Browse by Label: NONPLACE (GERMANY)

Artist:	FRIEDMANN, BURNT
Title:	Love Songs
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	NON 004EP

"A project, or rather, a labor of love spanning the last four years, The Love Songs EP is a teaser for the whole album shebang due out in early 2001. Featuring vocalists and dialogue, The Love Songs EP is described by Mr. Friedmann as 'post-electronic pop and rock'. In other words, into your aural realm will gently creep soulful techno, organic dub stylings, electronic melodies, and disembodied beats. It's created with the kind of tender loving care and unique sonic prowess that will surely have you begging for more. It has exclusive tracks and is a prelude to the full length album CD, Plays Love Songs, featuring guitarist Josef Suchy (Cologne), Black Sifichi (Paris), and Marcus Jaan (Sweden)."

Artist:	BEIGE
Title:	Non-Profit
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	NON 006EP

"'As tight as Bootsy's codpiece and as fanciful as George Clinton's views on space travel' Muzik on 'I Don't Either'. Following the release of Oliver 'Beige' Braun's debut album, I Don't Either, comes the release of his first single for Nonplace. 'Non-Profit' is aimed as much at the feet as the head, with elements of twisted house, techno, electro and Beige's peculiar sense of humour framed by the best funk done by a white man. Funny, funky, and totally rocking, this is alien funk of the highest order -- by one of Cologne's best new mood engineers."

Artist:	BEIGE
Title:	Ein Königreich Für Eine Handgranate
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 007CD

"Following the release of Oliver 'Beige' Braun's debut album, I Don't Either (the Leaf Label) and the Non-Profit-EP, comes his first album release for Burnt Friedman's label, Nonplace. Ein Königreich Für Eine Handgranate is aimed as much at the feet as the brains, with elements of wrecked furniture, lo-res R 'n' B, electro-smog and Beige's poignant wit that sleeps in the knife drawer. A long-time fellow of Friedman, Beige is one of Cologne's most subdued, reclusive and anti-hoity-toity programmers, sharing a mutual interest in reverent retro-futuristic excursions. Ein Königreich Für Eine Handgranate incorporates dismantled digits of hi-energy funk and purely electronically generated click-and-clonk beats, typical for the Beige-sound. A Timbalandscape drawn by a punk in a state of obsessive spasm."

Artist:	REPLICANT RUMBA ROCKERS
Title:	A Rather Interesting Mix
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 008CD

2002 release, available again in light of all the new Señor Coconut madness. This is a Burnt Friedman mix of classic Atom/Señor Coconut tracks, creating the "new" artist Replicant Rumba Rockers. Señor Coconut has spent the last decade eccentrically cranking up and taking to a digital extreme techno and Latin style vocabularies. In the process, he either created new music or altered the familiar beyond recognition; the result is a priori progressive entertainment of an integrity fuelled by impromptu wit and imagination. His some 50 album releases on the Rather Interesting (RI) label seem like cultural artifacts from the remote future -- an invented world that does not automatically give the authentic preference over the fake. Burnt Friedman went through the Latin-inspired RI repertoire, and concocted a continuous mix. By drastically editing at times and subtly overdubbing at others, Burnt Friedman blends his own favorite RI moments into an emphatically rhythmic, acoustically coherent yet stylistically extravagant, audio cinemascape. He presents the fictional Replicant Rumba Rockers in a costume whose worldliness is self-evident -- draped at first in the traditional hues of simulation, but ultimately cloaked in their own inscrutable logic. Artists include: Señor Coconut, Erik Satin, Los Sampler's, Midisport, Silver Sound, Dropshadow Disease, Roger Tubesound Ensemble, Ondas and Silver Sound (feat. Lisa Carbon).

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT, BURNT
Title:	Secret Rhythms
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 009CD

"Burnt Freidman and Jaki Liebezeit, both masters of deferral and playable un-playability, are living proof that freestyle-paced-hearts need neither race nor rattle. Operating expansively on utterly different levels on the other side of redundancy, they reduce hypertonic levels yet generate agitation through unpredictability. With two more musicians at their side, Josef Suchy and Morten Grønvad, they constitute a musical organism and the extraordinarily brilliant and dynamic sound quality invite both jazz aficionado and clubber to bask luxuriantly in the seductive live ambience. On Playing Secret Rhythms Burnt Friedman congenially transfers his typical emotionally operative method to the task of processing the instrumentalists' live musical elements to produce an elegantly resonating G4 assembly. By casually inserting keyboard and steel-drum sections, Friedman floods the constructions with their own bizarre beauty -- and a considerable portion of systole dub reminding us of his work with the Nu Dub Players. His partner on Playing Secret Rhythms is Jaki Liebezeit, a master of the pause and the stop, who is famous for the cyclical and liberating beat he produced as the drummer in the legendary Krautrock outfit Can from 1969 to 1978. He has trimmed back his drums: the pedals have gone and pure drum-skin remains. Friedman and Liebezeit are backed up by electric-guitar fusion legend Josef Suchy who collaborated previously with Friedman on his albums Con Ritmo and Plays Love Songs and Morten Grønvad who has proven his virtuosity in Señor Coconut among others. Plays Secret Rhythms knows no rules of play -- intuition and imagination permit no boundaries."

Artist:	DE CLARIO, DOMENICO
Title:	Shaker Road
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 010CD

"Burnt Friedman was on a journey through Australia and New Zealand, when his Melbourne-based friend , field recordist and composer David Franzke passed him an audio document by Domenico De Clario. The 50-minute excerpt came from a several-hour-long piano concert in which De Clario, his eyes bound, had played a grand piano on a passenger boat sailing through the night down the Yarra River in Melbourne. Now to all intents and purposes blind , De Clario seems to become a medium, as it were, whose slender-boned appendages moved the keys. The gently textured piano sound drifts into an increasingly meditative state. De Clario, born 1947 in Trieste, Italy recently took up an appointment as Head of the School of Visual Arts in Perth, Western Australia. Over the past few years, he has staged a number of 'blind' piano concerts in such venues as a skyscraper roof in Bangkok or a stairwell of a building in Salvador, Brazil. All the events were scheduled to coincide with the full moon or summer or winter solstices. The present recording was made in Shaker Village, Maine, USA in June 1996, and presents a compilation of the finest moments in a performance that lasted some 30 days."

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & NU DUB PLAYERS, BURNT
Title:	Fuck Back
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	NON 011EP

"Although the Nu Dub Players did exist in some form or another, for the new record hardly any electronic tools were applied. As a consequence, around 15 musicians from Auckland,New Zealand, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia and Cologne and Berlin participated in making this exotic folk-funk reggae hybrid. Mostly recorded under ozone layers this fascinating blend of styles and sounds always keeps you on the edge of your seat. The title-track 'Fuck Back' features singer and performing artist Theo Altenberg from Berlin. He was a member of the Viennese Otto Mühl Commune. Know for his photographs documenting the life of the commune from 1973-1978, he states:' Communal life was a life of intense psychological self-admiration, cut off from the outside world; there, the most diverse forms of free love and the sexual culture were played out. The potential released by this was converted into screenplays, photographic works and paintings- giving rise to new social utopias, researching democracy and analyses of language and substitution.' According to Altenberg, the commune was 'owned by the most consistently leftist practise, because we had made communal ownership a reality and had overcome petty rivalry, because we interpreted revolt as hedonism and were united by psychoanalytical theory.'"

Artist:	FREEFORM
Title:	Condensed
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 012CD

"With this compelling mix of Freeform highlights from the past 7 years Nonplace provides a introduction to Simon Pyke's finest grooves. All the titles -- although derived from the original releases were radically edited 'condensed' for predominantly entertaining purposes and remastered to guarantee 100% aural excitement. Similar to the Replicant Rumba Rockers release a year ago, Bernd Friedmann has again compiled favourites, 'picked the nuts' in a typical soundclash-DJ manner. Supposed to make sense as a continuous mix it starts with one of Freeform 's earlier tracks that may give you a clue about the significant leap that Simon's music has taken since he appeared 1995 in what has become the IDM scene. Back then his electronically generated music has also been described has hardly distinguishable in the sea of sound that was gushing forth in the wake of Warp's Artificial Intelligence series and other seminal IDM landmarks. Nevertheless, Pike's releases, flirting in turn with Ambient, Electronica, Techno, Dub and Industrial have proven to be enduring records. But now, attempts to describe Condensed in more detail are quite futile as there are no real points of reference to compare it to. It's providing an impressive array of junkyard astro-phunk designs. Naturally experimental, his adventurous approach to computer based composition is tempered by a healthy sense of fun. Rhythms and soundscapes that are ethnically tinged without being New Age. In fact, this alien world is closer to the space cadet excursions of Herbie Hancock or the intricacy of David Toop than it is to any of dance cultures peripheries. Most of his music has never been put on vinyl, so the music on Condensed is a vinyl debut release. Condensed wants to keep memories fresh. Out of several albums on several labels Burnt Friedman chose the most brilliant tracks by one of the most brilliant contemporary producers."

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & NU DUB PLAYERS, BURNT
Title:	Can't Cool
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 013CD

"20 musicians from Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Cape Town, Santiago de Chile and Cologne participated in making Can't Cool, an exotic afro-dub hybrid with more than a blend of soulful songs with the featured vocalists Abi, Patrice, Lovetta Pippin and Theo Altenberg. Mostly recorded under ozone layers this fascinating blend of styles and sounds always keeps you on the edge of your seat. Ever wondered what weed-smoking rasta martians listen to? Well, it's not this."

Artist:	VA
Title:	Difficult Easy Listening
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 014CD

"All non- associated artists team up for this concept record, it's not only a wild mixture of various exotic quality grooves, but a stunning assembly of tunes from extremely different sources. The musicians have a feel for time as distinctive as their own heartbeat. You hear compassion and anger, vulnerability and strength, but deepest of all, perhaps, a sadness that would be almost unendurable if it were not examined and transformed, somehow, into beauty." Artists: Shank, Swaii, Lycheelassi, Jaki Liebezeit & Burnt Friedman, B.F. & The Nu Dub Players, Replicant Rumba Rockers, Beige.

Artist:	SHANK
Title:	Do
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 015CD

"6 piece Improv band from Berlin meets Nonplace hard drives. The experiment took place in June 2003. The formation Shank, a group of 6 passionate improvisers from Berlin set up their equipment in the large session room: drums/bass/guitar/percussion/trumpet/samplers and an insane amount of fx processors. The purpose: play music out of nothing. Shank actually is a pure live instrumental band. Over the past 5 years they were touring Brazil, India, USA, Turkey and Europe; they were part of the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in New York 1999 and performed on various European Jazz Festivals. The motto is always the same: invent tunes from scratch. Their grooves are embedded, melting in the music, overlapped by suspense filled melodic and harmonic lines. During a live show in Berlin 2003 the Nonplace label decided to let Burnt Friedman produce Shank. In another studio space prepared for recordings Burnt Friedman hooked up his computer and hard drives. The sessions took one week, the following editing process 3 months. The first 2 probes of this hard disc improv mayhem are included on Difficult Easy Listening (non14/tracks 1,5), the previous Nonplace release. Former Recordings with Shank members include Teo Macero, Kevin Coyne, Jazzanova, Micatone, Orientation, Paul Brody Octet and Tanmoy Bose´s Taaltantra. Tanmoy Bose is Ravi Shankar´s tabla player and one of India´s top Tabla-Players. Besides the musicians are known for the musical participation in award winning radioplays, dance-, theatre- and film-projects. As you can hear Shank think and act globally ; hence, the music on this nonplaced disc entitled Do can be described as Abstract Global Music combining acoustic, electrically amplified and electronic sound sources. Their independency from any determining musical categories is one of their greatest achievements."

Artist:	BRAUN (AND THE MOB)
Title:	As the Veneer of Dumbness Starts to Fade
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 016CD

"Next step in evolution -- Beige is getting Braun ... A peculiar skittery form of fun-funk, the sounds of Cologne based Oliver Braun are totally unlike those experienced elsewhere, even amongst those of the clicks and cuts crew or other demented software manipulators. If it is funk, as it pertains to be, it owes to the likes of James Brown, Parliament and Neptunes/Timbaland than Autechre and Funkstorung. Braun´s third album also contains elements of house and RnB, sliced up into fragments of real horns, double bass, piano, accordion, claps and freakish vocals: in English, Spanish and a strange form of German-English nuzzling up the toaster,the crotch in one hand, the microphone in the other. It´s a record characterised by unsettling off kilter pacing and a fearless approach to ridicule hip hop codes. In a spasmodic jerky kind of way Braun brings the firing beat back."

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT FEAT. DAVID SYLVIAN, BURNT
Title:	Out In The Sticks
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	NON 017LP

A vinyl mini LP-only release from avant-jazz duo Burnt Friedman and Jaki Liebezeit, their second collaborative effort since Secret Rhythms (NON 009CD) came out on Nonplace in 2002. Friedman & Liebezeit have been playing live all over the world, improving their notoriously uncommon grooves and elaborating odd ones. Liebezeit, a master of the pause and the stop, is famous for the cyclical and liberating beat he produced as the drummer in the legendary Krautrock outfit Can from 1969 to 1978. On this release, Friedman and Liebezeit still casually manoeuvre round the jagged rocks of "four-four time." Soon after Friedman remixed two of David Sylvian's Blemish solo album tracks both producers teamed up for songwriting. Nonplace presents their first collaborative piece, featuring David Sylvian as guest vocalist. The following musicians are featured on this record: Hayden Chisholm, on clarinet, guitar-player Tim Motzer who used to work with King Britt and Ursula Rucker, Morten Grønvad, known for his contributions on Secret Rhythms, and Daniel Schroeter, who also appeared in the Nu Dub Players line up, plays bass guitar.

Artist:	FLANGER
Title:	Spirituals
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 018CD

Two of the most prolific producers in electronic music, Atom (aka Uwe Schmidt, Señor Coconut) and Burnt Friedman, team up as Flanger to create music that looks retrospectively to the past for its inspiration. With a group of marvelous musicians they swing back to the raw soul of the 1920s. Crafting jazz that blurs the lines between analog and electronics, this new Flanger album is all about re-imagining a period when music was still playful. Referencing a spiritual aesthetic when music was instantaneous and pure, they corralled material from their diverse live performances and guest musicians, much like the fin-de-siècle researchers who recorded the first spirituals. Infusing this release with a global bent, they sent their efforts back and forth electronically between their studios in Santiago, Chile and Cologne, Germany. Despite these technological touches, this album is not about reconstructing endless virtuoso solos via mere knob-twiddling. With Spirituals, Flanger want to explore and relive the emotional sides of this jazz-before-jazz, its moods and sentiments. The duo Flanger have been one of the boldest pioneers of contemporary music, known for doing the unexpected and for their ability to float freely into new frontiers. But no one could have expected that their fourth album, Spirituals would be a musical trip to the pre-jazz era of Swing music dating from 1920 to 1940, Django Reinhardt, New Orleans blues and Dixieland. Duke Ellington springs to mind. 1920s original styles recorded with the techniques of today -- modern acoustic instruments and hard drive science. Say hello to Burnt Friedman and Uwe Schmidt plus an Australian vocalist and a load of marvelous musicians, including: Riff Jackson III, Laurence Pike aka MF Shakespeare, Hayden Chisholm, Robert Nacken, Cameron Deyell, Thomas Hass, Lars Vissing, and Mocke Depret.

Artist:	ROOT 70
Title:	Heaps Dub
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 020CD

The internationally highly acclaimed jazz quartet Root 70 (Nils Wogram, Jochen Rueckert, Matt Penman and Hayden Chisholm) play their favorite songs from Flanger and Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players. Most original titles come from the Nonplace releases from 2000-2004. The predominantly programmed and electronically conceived pieces experience the finest acoustic makeover possible. All songs were arranged for trombone, saxophone, drums and double bass by Hayden Chisholm and were dubbed in their final stages by Burnt Friedman himself. The musical spectrum on Heaps Dub ranges from jazz, dub reggae, Latin jazz, odd grooves and more reconstructive mayhem. These songs cross the borders of the most traditional jazz while being naturally reproduced in Friedman's own genuine electronic style. The ten tracks assembled on Heaps Dub all come from the diverse albums Friedman has released with Flanger, Atom Heart and The Nu Dub Players, as well as from his solo material via the Nonplace label, circa 2000-2004. Root 70 are the electronically-conceived brain children of Friedman in classic jazz quartet style -- acoustic, from the page, and live. There are four dub tunes and four Latin-jazz songs, as well as a spoken word collage and a smooth jazz track on the album. The unmistakable timeless quality of Friedman's songwriting shines through, fully reconstructed and fully reconceived by this powerful quartet.

Artist:	FLANGER
Title:	Nuclear Jazz (Templates/Midnight Sound)
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 021CD

Flanger is Uwe Schmidt (Atom TM, Señor Coconut) and Burnt Friedman's electro-jazz project. Nuclear Jazz is a two-in-one, edited and freshly mastered reissue of Flanger's future jazz classics, Templates (1999) and Midnight Sound (2000). Nonplace offers a 79-minute (carefully edited down from around 100 minutes of original music) assembly of probably the most elaborate and witty electronic collaboration to date. Ten years ago, in December 1997, Atom TM and Burnt Friedman teamed up in Santiago to compose their first record, Templates. Equipped with a few electronic production devices: sampler, sequencer and keyboard, the duo managed to produce the ultimate organic, non-repetitive soundscape that blurred the borders between real, fake and hyper-real. Songs may start with an accumulation of shortest possible noise fragments derived from self-made instrumental samples -- programmed with the deliberate avoidance of repetition -- developing into the acoustic sound of a real jazz trio playing live. Templates was a simulation of small group jazz. Only one year later the duo decided to continue with their programmed jazz improvisations and connected their "brain-to-midi interfaces" in sunny Santiago again a year later. With Midnight Sound they added Latin flavors wherever they could and expanded their palette, not only with their wealth of ideas but also with their ability to "humanize" the sound of the samples, coupled with the funkiness of their music. With electrically defamiliarized instrument set-ups, Midnight Sound ignores all the stylistic pigeonholes that critics love squeezing musicians into. There seems to be nothing Flanger is reluctant to touch upon. Bolstered by a rare bonus track, it's time to refamiliarize yourself with these two electro-space-jazz classics.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN, BURNT
Title:	First Night Forever
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 022CD

This is Burnt Friedman's fourth studio full-length for the Nonplace label. Navigating an atypical musical expedition, Burnt Friedman's unusual trajectory curved its way through an adolescent obsession with percussion and a singular dedication to amassing a self-recorded audio library dating from1978. What followed in the late '80s was a period of art academia, performance and video art, then immersion in the first flurry of collaborative music projects. Since 1993, he released records under various names, and began working as Flanger with Uwe Schmidt aka Atom TM. As a result of annual travels to Australia and New Zealand, The Nu Dub Players took shape in 1997. In the year 2000, Friedman founded his own label, Nonplace, to ensure continuity for diverse musical adventures. Then there was the first collaborative effort in 2001 with Jaki Liebezeit and Joseph Suchy, which successfully combined odd meter rhythms, improvisation between electronic and acoustic instruments and a global view on music. Burnt Friedman's sound-sculpting signature has fully developed intuitively with true emotional maximalism. Guest contributors also include Hayden Chisholm (composer and reed player), singers Steve Spacek, Barbara Panther, Theo Altenberg, Daniel Dodd-Ellis and Enik as well as guitarist Joseph Suchy. Although First Night Forever houses the complete spectrum of 7 years' psychedelic audio wizardry, the record's aim is to reach a wide audience. Burnt's earlier solo productions, Con Ritmo (2000), Plays Love Songs (2001) and Can't Cool (2003) might have confused with their stylistic freedom and intricate perfectionism, but First Night Forever will simply enthrall everyone with a sense of eroticism.

Artist:	EMBASSADORS (FEAT. MICHEL ONGARU), THE
Title:	Healing The Music
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	NON 023CD

This is the debut release by The Embassadors, an international music collective formed by reed player/producer/Burnt Friedman collaborator, Hayden Chisholm. The collective is the result of over 12 years of Chisholm's globetrotting and co-productions, collecting musical information and forging musical bonds. After years of worldwide music research, touring with groups like Root 70, Pluramon, Burnt Friedman/Jaki Liebezeit, and creating the music for Rebecca Horn installations, Chisholm felt ready to begin tying it all together. The collective is made up of the trombonist Nils Wogram, Europe's leading trombone soloist; bassist Matt Penman, NYC's first-call bassist and collaborator with John Scofield; drummer Jochen Rueckert, often imitated and sought-after by figures like Pat Matheny and Madeleine Peyroux; violist and vocalist Gareth Lubbe, known as one of the top overtone singers in the world and principal violist in the Leipziger Gewandhaus; cellist Claudio Bohórquez, one of the world's top classical soloists with a unique faculty for improvising, and Hayden Chisholm on reeds and keys. With this diverse ensemble, Chisholm has brought together leading figures from across genres, setting the foundations for what is a truly global music collective of the highest order. Also featured on this release is the vocalist and multi-instrumentalist from Kenya, Michel Ongaru. As Chisholm describes: "I wrote the words in English, Michel would put them into Swahili and churn them out at light speed on his Braille machine and Rob would fire up the tapes. The dots on the page were then brought to life by Michel's voice, echoing through the burnt-out empty rooms of the third floor."

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT, BURNT
Title:	Unlimited Edition
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	NON 024EP

Burnt Friedman and Jaki Liebezeit (Can) present two new pieces as a pre-taster of their third album. Both musicians share a preference for so-called secret rhythms, which means that the rhythms are not hidden but less common, often foreign to Western culture. The two adventurous arrangements unfold an uncommonly hypnotic effect for respectively 10 minutes: a monstrous production, tapped from the instruments with the maximum possible degree of immediacy, and psychedelicized by Friedman's notorious dub technique.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT, BURNT
Title:	Secret Rhythms 3
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	NON 025CD

This is the third release in Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit's collaborative Secret Rhythms series, following Secret Rhythms 2, released by Nonplace in 2006. Jaki Liebezeit, together with Burnt Friedman continues to pursue a vision of new music. If it is still possible to establish a link with Liebezeit's past as a founding member of Can (1968-1978), then it lies in the spirit with which he seeks, then as now, new musical forms. The post-Can Liebezeit not only created his own cycle-based drum system but also developed an innovative drum set that concentrates on the essentials. Friedman and Liebezeit came together in Cologne in 2001, having recognized that they were on the same musical wavelength, sharing a preference for so-called "secret rhythms," which means that the rhythms are not hidden, but less common -- often foreign to Western culture. Friedman's amorphous sequences and placeless sound particles adhere to the same understanding of rhythm, allowing the two heterogeneous sound generators to perfectly intermesh and form a unit both acoustically and electronically. While the solo parts (vibraphone, guitar, and keyboard) set the tone of part 1 and 2 was colored by the singing of David Sylvian, the seven instrumental titles on part 3 dispense with soloist actions and dominant actors. All the voices and elements, which perform a circling movement forward like links in a chain, enjoy equal rights. Electronic and acoustic sound like they have always belonged together. "Die Ehrliche Haut" and "Wirklich Version" first appeared on parts 1 & 2 respectively, but were re-edited on a dub plate and slowed down. Burnt Friedman takes the credit for production, overdubs, and arranging the pieces on all three albums. Recorded in stages in the studio or rehearsal space over the course of months, the material finally emerges in the concentrated form of 5 to 10-minute songs, although terms like beginning or end have nothing to do with music of this kind. Other musicians include Hayden Chisholm, Tim Motzer, and Joseph Suchy.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT, BURNT
Title:	Secret Rhythms 3
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	NON 025LP

Previously released on CD by Nonplace, this is the third release in Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit's collaborative Secret Rhythms series. The instrumental titles of SR3 dispense with soloist actions and dominant actors. All the voices and elements, which perform a circling movement forward like links in a chain, enjoy equal rights. The material finally emerges in the concentrated form of 5-10 minute songs, exploring territory beyond the current style reproductions, that is to say: remote from retro or recycling! Secret Rhythms 3 was tapped from the instruments with the maximum possible degree of immediacy, and psychedelized by Friedman's notorious dub technique. Other musicians include Hayden Chisholm, Tim Motzer, and Joseph Suchy.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN, BURNT
Title:	Con Ritmo
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	NON 026CD

Nonplace re-issues Burnt Friedman's classic Con Ritmo, originally released in 2000, now newly-remastered with 4 bonus tracks. The music ventures into digital-age Latin lounge territory (one track features an astonishing Moog solo by Atom Heart, aka Señor Coconut) and the dub-scapes that Burnt Friedman has charted as Nonplace Urban Field. Con Ritmo captures the subtleties and complexities of a Latin-flavored live performance without descending into mere digital imitation. Friedman likes to play with notions of live, sampled and programmed material, but he also uses the capabilities of digital technology to produce edits, breaks and rhythmic matrices that even Tony Williams might think twice about attempting. It eases you into the comfortable notes without ever meandering into smooth or avant-garde territory. The actual album contains track edits, overdubs, new mastering, new design and packaging. Friedman was joined by The Disposable Rhythm Section, while he himself handled keyboard & vibraphone activity alongside Josef Suchy on guitar and Nico "Nuez" Pulsilamo on percussion. This record also features the work of the Humphrey X-34 -- the "bass-bot" that Friedman contrived while working with the Nu Dub Players -- a real-time improvised bass machine. The sound of Con Ritmo is the tinkling of ice cubes in a glass, of gentle breezes, and jazz-robots conglomerating for poolside massages somewhere warm and tropical. Turn down the world and tune in to the Con Ritmo vibration.

Artist:	EMBASSADORS, THE
Title:	Coptic Dub
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	NON 027CD

This is the second full-length album from The Embassadors, an international music collective formed by reed player/producer/collaborator, Hayden Chisholm. The artist himself elaborates on the creation of Coptic Dub this way: "...the instrumental sounds and mixing processes on this album have undergone so many levels of refinement they can easily defend themselves without the justification of the creators ... I believe the discussion of timbre and its degree of refinement, be it acoustic or electronic, is the only semi-objective criteria when it comes to judging music. How do I define refinement? I would say the gradual and careful removal of impurities. Mixed in with this, and complicating the process even more, is an aspect which has always been a part of my creations: the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi which views certain impurities, especially those occurring in nature, as beautiful. A good example of this is the saxophone sound itself with its strong air component when listened to or recorded up close. This aesthetic element is crucial in setting such works from the digital polishing applied in regular high end pop or even jazz productions. Burnt Friedman's style of applying dubs and effects is another way of breathing more life into the sounds. What is happening here is a complex layering upon layering within which the listener can find countless points of reference to navigate her way through the works. None of the sound sources are processed for the sake of it and there are deep metaphysical truths behind a simple space echo in the way our hallowed master "time" is played with and re-evoked. Sometimes it will approach the feeling of listening to music while in a dream, when individual elements are blurred in the passage of time which is no longer a simple arrow moving forward but rather an evolving and pliable cloud, inextricably linked to the perceiver." The follow-up to the acclaimed Healing The Music debut, Coptic Dub is pure lightness of deftly-executed jazz and dub, curling and twining in on itself in new forms and structures. Chisholm's tenor sax, Hammond organ, and steel drums are supported by Jochen Rueckert (drums) and Matt Penman (bass).

Artist:	VA
Title:	10th Anniversary Edition
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 028CD

With this anniversary edition featuring 14 exclusive tracks, Nonplace celebrates 10 years of label-dom. Ever since Burnt Friedman shortened Nonplace Urban Field to Nonplace back in 2000, the title has provided an ideal formula for music that soars upward with no intention of being pinned down. The best-known label project is Friedman's collaboration with Jaki Liebezeit, one of the most important drummers of our times (Can). They joined forces in order to quietly transgress musical idioms without demonstrative gestures of destruction and deconstruction. With breathtaking precision, their cyclical, uneven rhythms intermesh the played with the programmed: sequences, drums, synthesizers. In spite of rules and binding expressive forms, the strangely abstract, improvised ritual music that results falls somewhere between trance, dub, differentiation and reflection. Nonplace has existed as long as they've worked together. Since Hayden Chisholm (wind instruments) and Joseph Suchy (electric guitar) began working with Nonplace, they have made their mark on numerous label releases. Moving steadily away from jazz into unknown territory, Chisholm co-authors The Embassadors (Friedman is the producer), and pops up on numerous other Nonplace tracks. Listen without preconceptions, become a medium, risk playing a game with no rules: the subconscious reactions associated with blind spots in causal history equally hold true for the playing of Joseph Suchy. The compilation also features five tracks by Flanger. This cooperation between AtomTM and Friedman began in Chile in 1996 with Atari computers, samplers, and Akai MPC 3000, and resulted in three programmed post-jazz album releases on Ninja Tune. Since 2005, Flanger has been publishing on Nonplace. Rashad Becker, the label's resident mastering engineer, not only mastered the anniversary CD but remixed three back-catalog tracks at the same time. In addition, Mark Ernestus (Rhythm & Sound) mixed and co-produced a previously-unreleased Embassadors title.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT, BURNT
Title:	5 7 EP
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	NON 029EP

Restocked. Friedman & Liebezeit present two pieces in their "Secret Rhythms" project. Both tracks, one mixed and co-produced by Mark Ernestus (Rhythm & Sound) and one by Burnt Friedman, testify less to post-processing and editing techniques than to the physicality of the instruments played. The post-Can Liebezeit created his own cycle-based drum system and developed an innovative drumset. Friedman's percussive, synthetic or acoustic sound sequences adhere to the same understanding of rhythm, allowing the two sound generators to perfectly intermesh. Cover artwork by Theo Altenberg.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT, BURNT
Title:	Secret Rhythms 4
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 030CD

The fourth album release in the Secret Rhythms series by Burnt Friedman and Jaki Liebezeit (Can) results from a 10-year collaborative project encompassing live performances and studio sessions. What began as a rehearsal for a concert delivered at the Cologne Triennale 2000 turned into a long-term exploration of the laws governing rhythm. Therefore, this fourth CD is based, like its predecessors, on a variety of rhythms seldom heard elsewhere. Extreme manipulation, percussive overdubs and Friedman's sequence-like guitar and synthesizer (Korg MS20, in this case) provide accompaniment for music to which the notion of domination is foreign. The six hypnotic instrumentals are driven by Liebezeit's cyclic drumming. In Secret Rhythms 4, the interplay of reduction and maximization is elevated to an aesthetic principle, the sound distributed dynamically over background and foreground. Fusing electronic and acoustic, improvisation and postproduction, Friedman and Liebezeit move further away from Anglo-American models. And although the duo's preference for repetition is evidence of a refusal to flaunt virtuosity, the revived notion of Krautrock seems wholly inappropriate for Friedman and Liebezeit. Be it in concert or in the studio, the swing emerges naturally from the rhythmic pattern. That Mark Ernestus (Basic Channel) was invited to mix and co-produce the second track on the album is no coincidence: he played an important part in producing club tracks (e.g. Rhythm & Sound) unsurpassed in their bold minimalism and refined quality of sound. In the early 1990s, Liebezeit dispensed with his pedal-operated bass drums and hi-hats. After his ride cymbal met the same fate, he went on to develop a new style of drumming (repeating the feat he pulled off when a member of Can). Friedman: "No more than a few of these rhythms survived over the years, but the ones that did provided a core structure for various ongoing transmutations on each of the four albums and during live shows. Jaki sometimes joked about 'secret' rhythms, because in fact the rhythms are obvious, the opposite of hidden! The fact is, they are simply seldom heard in our country, and in clubs especially you don't hear them at all." While the three preceding albums were dominated by guest contributions, the new production is devoted almost exclusively to Liebezeit's drum set and the Friedman-typical combination of keyboards and string instruments, all kinds of percussion and the computer. There are two appearances by Joseph Suchy, whose unmistakable guitar sound has left its mark on all the Secret Rhythms releases. Rashad Becker has been responsible for mastering all Nonplace titles since the first production in 2000. For the first time, Friedman and Becker co-mixed one of the album titles, a spin-off from "Entsafter" (Secret Rhythms 3), a track whose groove was previously used in "Obscured by 5" and "The Librarian" (Secret Rhythms 1 and 2). The story ends with two unworldly musicians who make music for music's sake, while others, using the benefits of technology, have "moved on" and know what they want to sell with their music. Other guest musicians include Tim Motzer (E-Fuzz guitar), Hayden Chisholm (flute, saxophone) and Daniel Schroeter (bass guitar).

Artist:	FRIEDMAN, BURNT
Title:	Zen'Aku
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	NON 031EP

Burnt Friedman presents a preview of his forthcoming new solo album. He uses instruments and rhythms not usually found in electronic music, rattling pots and pans and also presenting his latest technological breakthrough in the form of the rubber band guitar. Guest appearances come from Joseph Suchy (electric guitar), Daniel Schroeter (bass), Hayden Chisholm (reeds) and Takeshi Nishimoto (sarod). The limited edition sleeve artwork was created by Berlin artist Theo Altenberg.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN, BURNT
Title:	Bokoboko
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	NON 033CD

Burnt Friedman presents his fourth solo album. Bokoboko is an entirely instrumental recording, impossible to pinpoint to existing genres of music. "Bokoboko" comes from the Japanese, like the other track titles, and means "uneven," "hollow-sounding" -- adjectives aptly describing the album's crooked, dynamic grooves as well as the many percussively-resounding instruments. Friedman, recognizable more or less by the sound of the ten instrumental tracks, plays prepared oil barrels/steel drums, all kinds of wood and metal percussion, gongs, monochord, a home-made rubber-band guitar, organ, synthesizer, and electric guitar. He is sometimes joined by Hayden Chisholm (wind instruments), Joseph Suchy (guitar), Daniel Schröter (bass), as well as, making his first guest appearance, Takeshi Nishimoto, a Berlin-based Japanese musician playing the sarod, a traditional Indian string instrument. The uneven types of rhythm, which provide the specific oscillation on which all the tracks are based, in principle obey all the components: melodies, noises, monophone sequences and dub echoes inserted into pre-sketched, programmed basic tracks. "Deku No Bo" and "Sendou" follow the same rhythmic formula, the same seven-part cyclic groove, even though it is hard to discover any superficial resemblance between the two. The same is basically true of the three parts of "Rimuse": here, an even groove is superimposed over the one divided into ten. "Bokoboko" follows the rhythmic pattern of 11 (divided into eight and three). The ten tracks on Bokoboko were recorded and mixed in Friedman's Berlin studio over the past three years. The cover shows a detail from a work by Theo Altenberg.

Artist:	FRIEDMAN, BURNT
Title:	Bokoboko
Label:	NONPLACE (GERMANY)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NON 033LP

Double LP version. Burnt Friedman presents his fourth solo album. Bokoboko is an entirely instrumental recording, impossible to pinpoint to existing genres of music. "Bokoboko" comes from the Japanese, like the other track titles, and means "uneven," "hollow-sounding" -- adjectives aptly describing the album's crooked, dynamic grooves as well as the many percussively-resounding instruments. Friedman, recognizable more or less by the sound of the ten instrumental tracks, plays prepared oil barrels/steel drums, all kinds of wood and metal percussion, gongs, monochord, a home-made rubber-band guitar, organ, synthesizer, and electric guitar. He is sometimes joined by Hayden Chisholm (wind instruments), Joseph Suchy (guitar), Daniel Schröter (bass), as well as, making his first guest appearance, Takeshi Nishimoto, a Berlin-based Japanese musician playing the sarod, a traditional Indian string instrument. The uneven types of rhythm, which provide the specific oscillation on which all the tracks are based, in principle obey all the components: melodies, noises, monophone sequences and dub echoes inserted into pre-sketched, programmed basic tracks. "Deku No Bo" and "Sendou" follow the same rhythmic formula, the same seven-part cyclic groove, even though it is hard to discover any superficial resemblance between the two. The same is basically true of the three parts of "Rimuse": here, an even groove is superimposed over the one divided into ten. "Bokoboko" follows the rhythmic pattern of 11 (divided into eight and three). The ten tracks on Bokoboko were recorded and mixed in Friedman's Berlin studio over the past three years. The cover shows a detail from a work by Theo Altenberg.

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