Daniel Brandt - Eternal Something

A Closer Listen

Momentum is at the core of Eternal Something – a record infused with the spirit of dance music that was originally to be composed entirely of cymbals. That this review is not found in our Experimental section should hint that the artist came to stray from this path. Instead, Daniel Brandt stumbled along a quite different route to create something unexpected. His debut solo release is the document for that journey – something eternal.

‘I wanted to create… songs that build up like dance tunes but don’t feel like club music at all.’

As part of the German electroacoustic trio Brandt Brauer Frick, Daniel Brandt is a multi-instrumentalist experienced in using his classical training to produce music quite removed from the classical world. Fittingly, this record is one quite removed from Brandt’s original vision: sequestering himself in a cabin in the woods, surrounded by cymbals. Instead, other ideas and instruments “imposed themselves” during his travels across the word, seeing friends and absorbing environments. Primarily comprising keys, percussion, guitars and trombone, the result sits somewhere between a dance record and a thoroughly modern jazz record – each track building in layers of loops, full of overt nods to other genres and infused with the spirit of improvisation.

It starts with a polyrhythmic excursion of experimental post-rock in “Chaparral Mesa” and ends with a sombre, brass-drenched valediction in “On The Move”. The tone may be disparate, but a plodding pulse shared offers the hint of something cyclical. In between the bookends the soundscapes range from dub-tinged electronica (“FSG”) to atmospheric percussive jams (“Casa Fiesta”). Halfway through, the ambient “Turn Over” offers a pocket of space in which to rest amid the humming throng – a lulling guitar-based bed quilted with drones of trombone. Despite the genre jumping, there’s an intricacy to the loop-based composition and execution that unifies these tracks. Despite relentless pulses and frenetic drums, there’s an atmosphere somehow calm – almost nonchalant. Like a confident person amid the timid and ill-fitting, loquacious and indefatigable.

While the first half of the record is playful, in the second half the mood turns to pensive. The intro to album highlight “Kale Me” is extended and atmospheric, building on a solitary looped piano note, while skittish drums caressed inject it with a frenzied liveliness. Following this is the title track, a low-key number in both dynamic and pitch. Through a smoke-infused atmosphere a drum ‘n’ bass rhythm provides energetic thrust, but soon fades, exposing trombone swells that had persisted throughout in all their sinister glory.

Brandt wanted to let these tracks evolve naturally, his minimal interference occasioning a sense of rawness and energy. In this, excepting a few passages, the album falls short. Rather than explosive, Eternal Something feels restless yet restrained, imbued with a simmering energy that is carefully siphoned to create an unending and engaging sense of momentum. It is created with swells, throbs and keys – but we also can’t overlook the key contribution of those cymbals that started it all. And so, like the pulse that never stops, we have come full circle. (Chris Redfearn-Murray)

Available here

Pitchfork 76

In 2012, the Brandt Brauer Frick ensemble, a German 10-piece chamber orchestra cranking out avant-garde techno music, made their U.S. debut at Lincoln Center. The following night, the core namesake trio brought their live act to Santos Party House for a late night marathon at the now-defunct Manhattan club. Since their start in 2008, Brandt Brauer Frick have split their time in performance venues at opposite ends of the spectrum like this: suit-and-tie fare one night, sweaty dance clothes the next.

As an ensemble, the group hones a balance between modern classical and dance music that hinges on deep repetition. For his first solo album, Eternal Something, the outfit’s percussionist Daniel Brandt has whittled the larger group’s acoustic approach to repetitive music down to his own solitary inklings. As a result, Eternal Something seems better suited to isolated contemplation than the dancefloor, even when the tracks build up to full-fledged drum attacks. Beyond the sounds he plays himself, Brandt has enlisted three others. Florian Juncker joins on trombone, Andreas Voss contributes cello, and then there is Manu Delago on the hang—a steelpan-derived instrument that was invented less than 20 years ago, looks like a flying saucer, and pings before it hums when struck.

Throughout Eternal Something, Brandt commands and layers sounds as percussive elements first and foremost, often obfuscating timbre in the process. The constant cello bowing on “Kale Me” becomes a quiet drone element beneath the pattering of stacked piano and guitar. On “Turn Over,” the hang seems to spiral around like a ticking clock falling through space, but the effect is propped up by ambiguous chirps and blips. It’s rare to hear an instrument run its full range, which muddies any attempts at parsing them out. Instead, riffs often drone in two or three-note variations, looping back on themselves quickly and constantly, ready to lock in-step with new sounds darting through. Brandt builds and diffuses rhythmic tension urgently, producing songs too busy and finicky to function as background noise.

The album’s opener, “Chaparral Mesa,” is the longest and most rewarding of the bunch. It begins with what sounds like a pair of intertwined guitars plucking single notes just out of unison. Brandt braids a wall of conspicuous, clean noise made up of single notes; some six minutes in, distorted strums lurch towards a thumping house break. Like much of the rest of the album, the effect is propulsive, tense, and entirely mesmerizing. Likewise, Juncker’s trombone creaks and swells ominously at the end of the title track, playing out more like an enveloping movie sound effect than dance fodder.

In that way at least, Eternal Something will sound familiar to any Brandt Brauer Frick fan, but Brandt’s solitude bears out an intimacy often missing in the group’s rigorous chamber music. These songs never feel preordained in the way that orchestral compositions do; they instead seem to work themselves out naturally. “On the Move” is a stunning kicker that builds from a plod to a chugging, horn-helmed swell. It’s the type of track that demands a full listen, lest you abandon the progress too early or miss out on the momentum by jumping in too late. This is the trick Brandt pitches throughout Eternal Something, carving out a path and begging you to see it through. Thankfully, he rewards patience with captivating twists and turns.