Secret Rhythms
Sinopsis
Let us all continue to enjoy believing that there is a beautiful mystery in the art of Jaki Liebezeit. What is it that has made his drumming – ever since his early days with Can – so enigmatic and hypnotising? The lack of an answer to this question is due, above all, to the continuous ambivalence of its rhythm. It is, simultaneously, a postulate of perfection and rigidity and yet, however, it gives off a contagious groove; it seemed perfect for the psychedelic music of the 1970s, but he was able to use it to offer a contagious backing to Can’s pop songs; he seems to want to emulate the strategy of a machine that never makes a mistake, but it is from there that we can feel the warm wind of the eternal music from Africa blowing upon us. It was this virtue that Burnt Friedman looked for when setting up this project as a duo, because he too is a restless aesthete, focusing his attention on electronics, but always tempted to drift off into soul, pop, dub or jazz. Together, they summon up high definition mantras, immersed in details in a constant state of agitation, animated by Liebezeit’s pulsating heartbeat. Secret rhythms is the name they have constantly used to describe their recordings. Possibly what they mean by this is that not everything is what we hear and see and that perhaps there are other things to be discovered when we demand something more.
It was as the drummer of Can that Jaki Liebezeit first gained the prominence that he now enjoys. While remaining the band’s steady and reliable drummer throughout their various incarnations, he never again enjoyed the fame and recognition that he deserved – not even his Phantomband or Club O Chaos projects had the required quality. It is only with Burnt Friedman and the Secret rhythms albums that his career has finally found the audience and favourable criticism that it merits – ever since the release of the first volume in 2002.