Paul Frick (b. 1979, Berlin) played keyboard in many bands and studied classical composition and piano in college and graduate school. He bought his first computer at age 20 so he could sample his favorite hip hop records. In 2008, Frick formed Brandt Brauer Frick with Jan Brauer and Daniel Brandt; the three perform analog EDM sets and have formed the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble, an 11-piece group of strings, brass, and percussion. Frick orchestrates their tracks for the ensemble, which has performed Brandt Brauer Frick’s unique brand of instrumental-EDM in clubs and concert halls.

Edited Interview Excerpts

What inspired you to expand into this 10-person ensemble out of your first album?

Actually the idea was already there really early because we were thinking, ok, we want to start in clubs, because that’s where we were coming from and that’s where we had a few contacts to get some gigs, maybe, so we needed a club set, wanted it quickly, so we worked with groove box and keyboard and drum pads. But while doing that we always thought how could we do it really, really live, much more live, and we realized, ok, we need more people because there are so many elements in the music. And then we made lists, what instruments…oh, damn, it’s 16 people, maybe a bit too much. And 10 is already really a bit crazy; economically it’s really a bit silly of us to do. It was just the idea how would it be and how would it work to do it without anything sequenced. …And then about two years after the idea we first tried it. And also because then we were just newly signed to !K7 [Records] and they were really into the idea and loaned us some money to do a rehearsal.

How did you go about choosing the actual instruments that would be part of the ensemble?

Why this instrumentation? We wanted some brass, but we thought, ok, we just want the rather deep brass that can actually do all these frequencies that are really pleasant when you hear techno. And also, some instruments just, for example, I wouldn’t see a flute in this. I like flute, but it was such a strong connotation. And somehow, it wouldn’t have been abstract enough; it could have sounded a bit too folkloristic. Same with clarinet; clarinet would sound really jazzy and saxophone was excluded.

There’s a click track for the whole [live] set. You’re putting together, say, eight songs; do you compose everything, the transitions between the songs?

No, usually there’s no transitions. Or if we make transitions then they’re improvised. And sometimes there’s also moments when I’ll turn off the click, or there also can be moments when I loop the click…and also on the click you have my voice often saying, “one, two, three, four, B!” That makes it easier for everybody.

You’ve had club shows with the group, and then you’ve had some sit-down concerts. Do you have a preference for either? Is there a reason you would do a concert over a club or vice-versa?

Good question. I mean, usually we always really enjoy the changes because also any club or festival context then will be different than the other, and also the sit-down situation can be also really different. I don’t know, we’ve had some of the most amazing experience actually with dancing and standing people. In general, for the music to go into detail and for the fun of making music, often seated concerts have showed to be a bit better…but still, sometimes the adrenaline is of course more crazy if people are standing. But I think the best recordings, for example, are from seated concerts. But we basically also don’t want to find a final answer to this, because it’s more about also making music, and we think we have really much the idea of a collective, like this, also we find it interesting in music when it has, when it becomes kind of a collective music, and a music that’s not maybe so lyrical… So making music with this can also mean trying to imagine your perfect space where you would play it, or a piece can be almost like a social situation, and that’s the cool thing about club music, that often club music only becomes the full experience with the people, and only then you see kind of its architecture. You experience it, and you don’t get annoyed with the repetitions or so on.

…So it’s hard to tell, until now I feel often more safe with seated concerts, also because usually you have more time to set up and have a proper sound check and so on. This can be really annoying; we’ve done festival gigs without a sound check, kind of, and when you have 20 microphones onstage it’s really a pain in the ass. And we’ve also had a few concerts with really sound problems. But by now it’s really very good and Rashad [Becker] has always checked out more like what microphones could improve the situation, so by now it’s also really safe against feedback and stuff. But sometimes it can be, I mean, I was sometimes on festival stages screaming out of rage, like, “This can’t be true!” But of course these difficult situations also make you learn and make you also kind of prove mentally towards all the problems that can appear.

…There’s music that works in many contexts, but that’s not necessarily a proof of quality. There’s music that’s really vulnerable against being destroyed by a context, but may still be something really special in a certain context. Even something so normal like radio is a context. I think there’s music that I actually don’t really like, but when it comes at that moment at the radio, I think, yeah, that’s the thing to listen to now… Sometimes you can’t really reference to the piece totally out of a context.