Secret Rhythms 4

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.