Templates

This is the first collaborative album by Burnt Friedman and Uwe “Atom™” Schmidt, and it absolutely crackles with the electricity of two impossibly inventive minds interacting. It’s electronic jazz of a unique kind — perhaps the only comparison that makes sense would be do describe it as “Squarepusher but delicate.” That is to say, it has Tom Jenkinson’s way with constantly unfolding complex jazz-fusion melodies, and fusion of live instruments into IDM / jungle rhythms — but where he tends to maximalism, everything here is about restraint, space and clipped sounds. Schmidt’s Fender Rhodes and electric bass playing and Friedman’s percussion are endlessly complex, but amazingly they strip away everything that’s most tedious about fusion — in particular the tendency to prioritise being impressive — and instead let that crackling electricity generate delirious joy and trippy tingling physicality. With so much rapid rhythm and never-repeating playing, this should be esoteric — but in fact it’s a deliciously easy way into both men’s dauntingly huge catalogues.