Frans Friederich – Ambient 1998 – 2013

Frans Friederich is a dutch trumpet-player, musician, composer and music teacher living in Zierikzee, Holland.
He has been playing since 1980 in different musical constellations – in bands like  Dull Schicksal and Trespassers W, bands that gained local cult status due to their experimental and improvisational approach.

In 1997 he started working on his enormous Recyclopedia project: releasing a cd-album for every single letter in the alphabet.
A large scale project with solo works and collaborations that is still in progress but slowly nearing completion now.
(I had the honour of remixing samples of editions [A] to [Q] to a special mix that was released as the edition for the letter [R]: you can still find this mix [HERE])

Friederich’s Bandcamp page displays an extensive overview of his work, all compiled by their different styles  – and all freely downloadble (!!).

All these compilations present a large array of adventurous experiments, but there are two specific releases that justify recommendation here on Ambientblog: 
Ambient 2002 – 2013” and Ambient 2 – 1998 – 2013” , respectively (- you probably guessed thát).

These eleven tracks (130 minutes total), show that Friederich’s approach to music comes from a broader vision than ‘ambient’ music alone, and this is what makes them somewhat ‘different’ from most ‘mainstream ambient’.

Some of the tracks are quite bare-bone solo pieces (the closing track “Bos” is a 24 minute piece built from environmental forest recordings), others are created with partner-in-ambient-crime Robert Kroos, who helps creating deep zen-like drone pieces.
As an exception to this, there is also “F für Friede (P for Piece)”, featuring an ensemble of no less than 19 performers (including Michel Banabila). 

Friederich is a generous man, obviously: all his compilations are offered as free downloads… not even pay what you want. So here’s your chance to take a dive into his history – and wíth that into some interesting parts of the dutch experimental music.

 

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