Contact
honnda98.6 [AT] gmail
About
By Clandestine
Amnon Freidlin occupies an elastic, raw realm of music composition, performance, and visual design. Brooklyn-based and touted on a bevy of global must-hear lists, he has formed a bold new language within the contemporary creative ecosystem. Freidlin records and tours solo in electronic music outfit Honnda; composes electroacoustic and chamber works; designs for iconic institutions and artists; works on video and audio in soiled pop-thrashers Mouthguard88; and plays guitar/electronics in experimental chamber-punk ensemble Normal Love. He is a former member of the post-minimalist group, Zs ("one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York” -The New York Times).
As Honnda, he was recently named Musical-Artist-in-Residence of the Ultimate Rivals game franchise. Ultimate Rivals: The Court (Original Game Soundtrack), was released on Orange Milk, featuring vocals by Dai Burger and moistbreezy. "What if NBA Jam were a fighting game? It’d be Ultimate Rivals” (Polygon), where Megan Rapinoe dunks on Lebron James.
Depicted as new-jack slime, hyperkinetic funk, avant-bass music, psychedelic club, and future-pop, Honnda’s M.O. is “to create a portal to infinite victory.”
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“What if pop music actually aspired to be art? Honnda makes it happen …Where modern radio fails us, Maraschino Mic Drop succeeds…Honnda confirms the conspiracy theory that the Major Label Illuminati only crank out vapid music because they can. Sure this is every bit as fun, danceable and sexually charged as the next song you hear on Power 105.1, but Freidlin digs deeper to deliver a much more satisfying listening experience…This is the future of production.”
-The Big Takeover─
Freidlin’s work for Ultimate Rivals: The Court doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it continues several trends present in 2021’s strongest game music releases – smashing game score debuts by established artists.
-Simon Elchlepp, The Greatest Game Music
Freidlin has shared bills across the US and Europe with Yaeji, Trina, UNIIQU3, Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Kool Keith/Dr Octagon, Machine Girl, J-Cush, Bad Brains, Matmos, The Sun Ra Arkestra, Crash Course in Science, Tim Berne’s Bloodcount, and many more. He has premiered work at the Bang on a Can Marathon and Borscht Film Festival, performed at the Primavera Club Festival, DJed on NTS radio, and has been awarded multiple grants for composing. His release as Honnda, Diamonds in the Microwave (Orange Milk/Attracted Vinyl) featured contributions from celebrated Queens rapper Dai Burger and video virtuoso Will Rahilly. Honnda’s latest album Maraschino Mic Drop, also on Orange Milk Records (heralded as “possibly the world’s most vital cassette label” by Rolling Stone), features remixes by Carpainter, Foodman (Japan), and Noer the Boy. Bandcamp Daily called it "unfiltered happiness, dizzy and hysterical and irresistible."
Barneys New York commissioned a We Are Prism ft. Honnda installation, alongside work by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park). Collaborating with Barneys, he also composed and designed sound for artist Nick Cave, Louise Bourgeois, Comme des Garçons, Prada, Christian Louboutin and more. Freidlin has since dived deeper into composing for digital media and film, as well as translating his unique voice to the visual realm. Lauded for his visual design work by The New York Times as “covetable,” Freidlin has produced work for iconic cultural forces like Patti Smith, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael Kors, Laurie Anderson, Alexander Wang, Rosanne Cash, Steve Reich, John Zorn, and New York Philharmonic, among others.
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Freidlin’s work for Ultimate Rivals: The Court doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it continues several trends present in 2021’s strongest game music releases – smashing game score debuts by established artists.
…Opener “Megabloom” is a homage to NYC and not just because a futuristic version of the city features as the game’s backdrop. Freidlin’s work on the Ultimate Rivals: The Court soundtrack coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC in Spring 2020. As a result, “Megabloom” emerged as “a mammoth track with NYC artists channeling the city and hitting with this big ‘comeback’ energy”, according to Freidlin. Indeed, “Megabloom” is a perfect cyberpunk anthem, driven by beats that are as pumping and head-nodding as they are intricately layered, full of rewarding rhythmic details.…Ultimately, there are 15 minutes of innovative, ambitious electronic music on the Ultimate Rivals: The Court soundtrack – packed with more ideas than what 95% of game soundtracks often deliver in several times that duration. Ultimate Rivals: The Court’s arcade gameplay might be straightforward and didn’t require a soundtrack of immense depth and variety – but that’s precisely what Freidlin delivers here, while never neglecting the need to keep hands and feet moving.
-Simon Elchlepp, The Greatest Game Music─
It’s been three years since Honnda released their last project on Orange Milk Records,Maraschino Mic Drop, cementing their unique place within experimental dance music. This time around, Honnda has created a body of work that reaches past the musical space serving as the OST for the breakout game from Bit Fry Game Studio; Ultimate Rivals: The Court.…Not only breaking boundaries within the sports video-game category, Rivals pushes the envelope seeking out Honnda’s experimental sound. Without disappointment, Honnda’s characteristically sleek but punchy sound design creates a fitting sonic backbone for the high-energy “near future” gameplay.
…Honnda’s OST not only matches Ultimate Rivals: The Court aesthetically, with its fast-paced futuristic sound design, but also in its functionality when paired with the high-paced sports gameplay. Dynamic, futuristic, and heart palpitating, each song heightens the experience of the game by creating a hypnotic state of enjoyable tension…The OST takes up just the right amount of room within the paired experience, somehow being unpredictable and hypnotic simultaneously.
…Despite the beauty that comes with experiencing the game and the soundtrack together, Honnda’s creation also stands on its own sonically. Rather than needing the support of the game, the OST is only bound by its conceptual inspiration, living on its own as a piece of work. More than anything, this work highlights the dexterity of Honnda, augmenting their sound to match the feel of the game while still retaining the core stylistic nature of their previous works.
-Kiah Easton, Editorial Director, ACRN─
The conversation between computer games and electronic dance music started almost as soon as both fields were created. Gaming has provided an endless source of spiritual inspiration and samples for imaginative producers. Enter Honnda, the experimental electronic composer whose previous album “Maraschino Mic Drop” was released by Orange Milk Records (Machine Girl, Foodman, Fire-Toolz, Kate NV).His latest effort functions as both a music-for-music’s sake experience, and as the original game soundtrack to the forthcoming independent game Ultimate Rivals: The Court from breakout game studio Bit Fry and its founder and creator, multi-media artist BXL Gotham. The Court is a reimagined NBA-licensed basketball game, the second in the franchise for the developers following their freshman entry, Ultimate Rivals: The Rink, the NHL-licensed arcade hockey title that launched to critical acclaim in December 2019 on Apple Arcade.
-Hangtime Magazine
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“There are a million weird similes that could be used to describe Honnda’s Diamonds In The Microwave. You could say that it’s like being in a nightclub made of melting candy and power tools. You could say it’s like being at a futuristic pep rally at a school for wayward mannequins. That said, you don’t need an onslaught of fetishy creative writing to tell you that this album isn’t like anything you’ve heard before.”
-Stereogum
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“... a peculiar phenomena who occupies a fluid, raw and atypical realm of production, composition and design. From sound designing Nick Cave’s Barneys New York installation to sharing bills with Yaeji, J-Cush and The Sun Ra Arkestra, the Brooklyn-based producer is a multidisciplinary whose borders are nonexistent.” -Dummy Mag
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“The latest from Honnda is a jam of the highest order. Touching on the hyperkinetic funk of Classical Curves-era Jam City and the mind-obliterating sonics of last year’s Errorsmith full-length, ‘Maraschino Zap’ puts New Jack Swing in a blender while dropping a sugary sweet vocal from Lutkie like a cherry on top.” Miles Bowe, -Fact Magazine
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“Like a Fanta ad cast by members of Toontown and setin a neon club, Honnda’s “Fuchsia Philharmonic” is crispy around the corners and slushy in the middle, holding the shine of its production in its own hand and greasing off its cowlick with fervent steps. Up and down it pulses. Left and right it pulls. Steps and swirls of vocal emulation/simulation bounce next to one another as the steady beat and bass mingles with arching and falling synths. The captions are on the TV, but no one is paying attention. The correct understanding of language is of no importance here. Only the pure sound(s) of virtual lips smacking and robotic tongues clicking hold any value. Run it.” -Tiny Mix Tapes
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”While some tracks retain semblances of real-world music genres - such the reggaeton bed of ‘Megga Millionz’ - Maraschino Mic Drop largely takes place in Honnda’s own idiosyncratic world. The step and shuffle of US dance music is still there, but not in any shape humans of the 20th century would understand.” -The Quietus: Spool‘s Out