Flanger - Nuklear Jazz
Templates/Midnight Sound re-issue plus bonus tracks! Out March 30, 2007.

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Artist: Flanger
Title: Nuclear Jazz (Templates/Midnight Sound)
format: CD (non21)
date: 30.03.2007

"It's difficult to imagine a time when it won't sound before its time." (Real Groove, New Zealand 1999)

With this "two in one" - edited and freshly mastered reissue of Flanger´s early records, Nonplace offers a 79 minutes assembly of probably the most elaborate and witty electronic productions around. Atom™ and Burnt Friedman attack the most common preconception of electronic music - its artificiality -, slice it into a million pieces and stitch a pixelated patchwork from the jagged fragments: hence the title, "Nuclear Jazz". The first and only Flanger remix to date - produced in 1999 for the Italian artist Gak Sato - completes this "blistering set of instrumentals that snare both, the intellect and the hips".(uncut 2000)

10 years ago, in December 1997 Atom™ and Burnt Friedman teamed up in Santiago de Chile to compose "Templates". Atom™, also known as Señor Coconut, had moved life and studio to Chile in 1997 and B.Friedman flew in as part of his annual travel to New Zealand and Australia.
Equipped with few electronic production devices: sampler, sequencer and keyboard the duo managed to produce the entire first Flanger record "Templates" within one week only. On their search for the ultimate organic, non-repetitive sound scape they intended to blur the borders between "real", "fake" and "hyperreal": Songs may start with an accumulation of shortest possible noise fragments derived from self-made instrumental samples - programmed with the deliberate avoidance of repetition - developing into the acoustic sound of a real jazz trio playing live. "Templates was a simulation of small group jazz. What sounded superficially like real time playing was revealed to be samples deployed in a psychedelic demonstration of Friedman´s Nonplace ideas, undercutting the record´s apparent virtuosity and any assumptions about the meaning of the word 'genuine'," reviews The Wire magazine in 1999.
"Atom™ and Burnt Friedman found a place where they could indulge their sheer love of playing," as stated in the 1999 liner notes of the second album "Midnight Sound". They added the latin flavour wherever they could. "Not only their wealth of ideas but also their ability to 'humanize' the sound of samples, coupled with the funkiness of their music, is evident on this album. With electrically defamiliarized instrument set ups, 'Midnight Sound' ignores all the stylistic pigeon holes that critics so love squeezing musicians into. There seems to be nothing Flanger is reluctant to touch upon."

Go to aurgasm.us
Hear it. Enjoy it.

The latest record out on Nonplace is by Root 70, called "Heaps Dub". A live band led by Flanger/Burnt Friedman collaborator Hayden Chisholm. "Heaps Dub" is made up of live arrangements and re-workings of the music of Burnt Friedman. It includes live versions of tracks from previous albums 'Can't Cool' by Burnt Friedman and the Nu Dub Players, and 'Midnight Sound' by Flanger.

Hayden is arranger on the album and also plays saxaphone and clarinet. You can also hear his playing on Flanger's 'Spirituals'.

Out in Europe, 2nd June 2006.
Thru Nonplace Records

Tracklisting:

1. Get Things Straight
2. Designer Groove
3. Five Star Group Travel
4. Destination Unknown
5. Revivitator
6. Escape the Night
7. Life Is Worth Dying For
8. It Ain't Rocket Science
9. Bosco's Disposable Driver
10. Nightbeat

What with Uwe Schmidt's relentless output as Atom TM and a million other guises its often easy to forget that the first album he released under the Flanger moniker with Burnt Friedman was about as innovative and influential as the post-jazz-glitch movement has ever produced. Beautifully microscopic emissions, percussive lines made out of bits of static and white noise, skittering beats and deep Rhodes keyed in for that late night jazz club effect. The two albums that followed on from this amazing debut failed to recapture the same fresh spark, instead settling for a less daring approach to largely familiar material. It's nice to see, then, that for their fourth album (the first for Friedman's own Nonplace imprint) the duo have drafted in a whole host of contributors and have radically altered their sound – delivering a rather bizarre but refreshing take on 1920's charleston with minimal digital intervention. The vocals of Riff Pike III do for the jazzclub what Jamie Lidell has done for funk – straight delivery that's only ever so slightly given the traditional flanger treatment - consciously at the other end of the spectrum to what this duo have delieverd in the past. A cockle-warming, feelgood excursion from two undisputed masters.

www.boomkat.com

Navigating an atypical musical expedition, Burnt Friedman's unusual trajectory curved its way through an adolescent obsession with drums and a singular dedication to amassing a self-recorded audio-library dating from 1978. What followed in the late 80ties was a period of art academia, then immersion in the first flurry of collaborative music projects. Since 1993 he released records under various names, such as Nonplace Urban Field, Some More Crime and began working as Flanger with Uwe Schmidt aka Atom. As a result of annual travels to Australia and New Zealand the Nu Dub Players took shape in 1997. In the year 2000 Friedman founded his own record label, Nonplace, to ensure continuity for independent musical adventures like collaborations with Jaki Liebezeit, The Nu Dub Players and Flanger. Besides, Friedman just started a collaboration with David Sylvian and Steve Jansen, Nine Horses.

Known to his mother as Uwe Schmidt, Flanger's prolific other half is probably better known to you as either Atom Heart, LB (aka Lassigue Benthaus), Geeez'n'Gosh or Seor Coconut. Formerly of Frankfurt, he now lives in his adopted home of Santiago de Chile. His variety of styles and sounds sprawl from early acid experiences via excursions into ambient until the boundaries and definitions finally disappeared in 1994 when he founded his own label, Rather Interesting. Seor Coconut's album of Kraftwerk covers in a latin style, and LB's electro covers of rock and funk classics (on Output) pushed the possibilities of electronic music still further. He has released more than 150 different records including collaborations with Bill Laswell, Haruomi Hosono and Towa Tei. Atom has recently been remixing Air, Depeche Mode, Martin Gore, Cesaria Evora and Towa Tei amongst many others.

Oh, cataclysm. A radius that expands beyond measurable miles, into
lives across the world, refracting into history and culture, altering previous conceptions. How many times in the past months have you heard the music of New Orleans featured on the news, in a store, on the radio? How should we react to this music now? Why do we need to hear it? For mourning or comfort? Like other endangered New Orleans cultural traditions, we want to know that it will survive. We want what we knew of New Orleans, from the food to Mardi Gras to music, however typical and surface-level, to somehow remain constant. People, places, instruments, artefacts are lost, much of it long gone before Katrina swept through, but now we are all preservationists.

So this project exploring early jazz, New Orleans blues, Dixieland, the
roots of what would become swing and big band is suddenly burdened
with the memory of New Orleans. Spirituals is a dramatic departure for long-time collaborators Uwe Schmidt and Burnt Friedman (...) and is a result of three years of sending sound files between their respective Chilean and German studios. The electronic augmentation is for the most part very subtle and acoustic jazz instruments and vocals are the stars here: clarinet, horns, banjo, softly brushed snare.

Previously a light-hearted, playful, relaxed affair, it's hard to remove yourself from the present day and step into the time capsule they have tastefully assembled. The album begins with the slow, weeping dirge of "Funeral March" as if to say the music and era are dead and respects must first be paid. The horns seem to riff on "Summertime," deepened with cavernous digital echo. But as the tempos pick up on the rest of the tracks it's impossible to not start tapping along. The brushes dance on the snare, the sock-hats clamp together, banjo strums quicken, and clarinet and horns float warmly above this Charleston beat.

There are minute squiggles and crunches of electronics perceptible, some effects put on a splash cymbal hit perhaps, but they put more of their producing skills into making this acohesive, believable homage to the era. They don't go overboard recreating the production sounds of old recording, but occasionally layer atop a patina of vinyl crackle and wax cylinder vocals. Kind of like those classic Django Reinhardt/ Stéphane Grappelli/Hot Club of France recordings getting a little bit of dub treatment. Soft intonations of electric guitar also appear, giving a nod to Charlie Christian.

They cut up vocals contributed by an Australian male singer, but for the most part leave his thankfully smooth and subtle contributions untreated (yes, he does scat and whistle a bit but it's not annoying). Some remixed and extended versions are included that possess a bit more electronic embellishment. All in all, a great recreation of this era of jazz that sidesteps hokey clichés and overly traditional fussiness while still brimming with life and energy. The city of its birth will never be the same, the music may be hard to separate from the images for quite some time, but it still feels good to just hear it.

Andy Tefft,
Indie Workshop, US
27 Nov 2005