Drome

Bernd Friedmann initially operated under the Drome alias, a project rooted more firmly in techno and dub than his later Nonplace Urban Field and Some More Crime work. Early singles and a debut album surfaced on Toxiktrakks, with subsequent material appearing via Wigwam and Ninja Tune. That restlessness toward established norms already surfaced clearly in these releases, most plainly in their unexpected fusions. Although Drome output has become sporadic, the name stays closely tied to the emergence of downtempo breakbeat and trip-hop, built around hip-hop-derived rhythms enriched with dense ambient and dub sampling and aimed squarely at domestic listening rather than club play. Born in Berlin, Friedmann’s pursuit of swift stylistic evolution secured a place on the 1995 two-disc Ntone sampler Earthrise, issued by the U.S. Instinct label, and led to a run of joint live shows in Australia and Japan at the close of 1996 with Uwe Schmidt, known as Atom Heart. Nonplace Urban Field recordings such as Raum Fur Notizen and Golden Star have since taken precedence, while remixes for Unitone Hi-Fi, Bowery Electric, and Hab push the same boundary-dissolving sensibility further into abstract terrain.