Bernd Friedmann is the mind behind the two leftfield digital dub cum breakbeat science projects Drome and Nonplace Urban Field. A string of releases including a swag of singles for German label Tox, and albums on Ntone (the ambient dub offshoot of Ninja Tune) and Incoming, has finally resulted in him coming to Australia for a series of live shows with other German experimenter Atom Heart. His album on Ntone, The Final Corporate Colonisation Of The Unconscious back in 1993, saw heavy dubbed out washes of sound and bass clash occasionally with speeding breakbeats and the odd (Monty) Pythonesque soundbite, whilst his self-titled Nonplace Urban Field album of 1995 saw further explorations into the realms of digital dub. A short communication by the wonders of the fax machine, soon to be severely restricted by time charges courtesy of our newly privatised Telstra, resulted in the following.

As jungle/drum'n'bass pours forth from the UK in ever increasing volumes, breakbeats have become once again fashionable if only to update the acid jazz of the early Nineties turning it into some of the coffee-table "jazzy jungle" of today. Expensive samplers offer timestretching and sound manipulation possibilities without end but do not necessarily mean that these new facilitates will spawn interesting, let alone, experimental outcomes. Bernd elaborates; "I used to play drums in the early Eighties when music , in general, was taking up most of my leisure time, and of course I loved to drum so-called 'breakbeats'. The first cheap drum machines didn't allow you to program those tricky, highly dynamic snares and 'atmos' but nowadays software like 'recycling' and sampling technology enables musicians to automatically generate them. However history reveals that no remarkable artistic progress has been derived solely from technical enhancements - to have the choice does not make the musician . . . . [that is why] James Brown's 'funky drummer' is still one of their favourite choices. I'm bored to death with 'drum'n'bass' . . . . I appreciate a few unique pieces by Luke Vibert, Squarepusher and Spacer - being exceptional is what they have in common [rather than similar stylistic genres], and there is also interesting stuff going on at Pork Recordings, Basic Channel, and from Matthew 'Dr Rockit' Herbert".

Fellow German Alec Empire has been quoted as arguing that his own work experimenting with breakbeats had been a reaction to the increase of Nazism in German. Reacting to Mark Spoon's (of Jam & Spoon) well publicised comment on European MTV that "blacks had their hip hop and we whites had techno", and Dr Motte's comments after the Love Parade that "Jews should stop moaning about German history", Alec Empire made specific moves to introduce breakbeats as a way of escaping what he saw as the underlying White Power politics of the German trance movement. Here in Australia similar "Whiting out" controversies erupted over the "removal" of the lyrics to Yothu Yindi's Treaty when it was remixed and depoliticised into its most well-known chart-topping version. Culture inscribes its own meanings upon sounds directly influencing the way we hear them - in a society in which people are discriminated against upon racial grounds is it any wonder that we hold preconceptions of how "Black music" sounds? Or that "Black people are naturally funky"? As Western popular music has spread and mutated across the globe it has become infused with the styles and influences of such a conglomeration of other (Other?) cultures and ethnicities it is almost meaningless to talk of music being "White" or "Black". When talked of in these terms there is always an ulterior political motive in mind. Musical history is not linear and as Bernd explains, efforts to trace "purity" be it racial or otherwise are doomed to failure; "do you know that Miles Davis story? He'd claimed that White folks couldn't play jazz but put to the test of judging White and Black performers blindfolded he was wrong every time". Nevertheless access to high tech instruments and studios often influence who produces what we hear.

Electronic music removes the need for the performer to have a "face" or a "live presence" and the music industry, still struggling to come to terms with dance music as a whole, is quite uncomfortable with this. Who do they promote? How do you boost sales by having musicians on the front cover of magazines if people don't know what they look like in the first place? "The live show, its unpredictable. I use multitracking that enables me to play back unique songs without even using a live instrument and I've been recording my own "DJ tools" on several CDs so I don't even need to bring my whole studio up onto the stage".

Yellow Peril

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