Badun, F.L.A.N.G.E.R.

I can see it looming....
I go through stages wherein I will discover an artist, and immediately require all of their recordings. Normally this is fine and dandy, but there are a few out there who pose difficulties. I have yet to reach Merzbow/Muslim Gauze levels of insanity, but Uwe Schmidt's back catalogue is both large and out of print. After the pleasures of Badun and Flanger, there will be a lot of Atom Heart.

Badun's self-titled album is odd. It is ambient jazz, with thousands upon thousands of edits. The level of detail in each track is so great, that the whole thing becomes too much to listen to intently 90% of the time, and somehow, paradoxically, becomes background music. It's very much in the vein of Flanger, or Burnt Friedman's solo stuff: a laidback variety of jazz fusion, with live performances transformed through serious sample editing. Stuttering drums, little motifs that keep looping and rearranging themselves - the works. Good, but I suspect this band is capable of great.

Then there is Templates, by Flanger. Templates was made by Burnt Friedman and Uwe Schmidt, both well known under their own names. Templates was made, reportedly, in two weeks, using a handful of instruments and an MPC. This album is as staggering today as it was then - it easily stands next to any major IDM signpost album as a work that defined the state of the art. It's quite easy to underestimate it, because the medium is cocktail jazz, and the way in which the duo have fused the live instruments and performances with sampling techniques is so seamless that half the time you won't even notice unless you're listening closely. Not having heard Flanger is like not having heard Autechre or Mouse on Mars. Seriously, check it out.