Interview Badun

Background musicali molto differenti dei musicisti inventori del progetto Badun (Olivier Duckart, Aske Krammer e Brian Møller) si sono uniti in un solo progetto, che in questi giorni ha salutato il debutto ufficiale nonostante anni di ricerca, sperimentazione in studio e differenti live stage. La loro formula sonora (che secondo gli stessi artefici, attinge in parte dai repertori di Miles Davis ai tempi di Bitches Brew, dei Weather Report, del duo Flanger e di alcuni artisti nipponici quali Sora) integra diversi elementi, lasciando pressocche' inalterata quella squisita vena melanconica delle produzioni danesi contemporanee. Molti gli entusiasmi suscitati anche tra illustri ascoltatori: tra questi anche Joshua Eustis dei Telefon Tel Aviv, che ha dichiarato senza remora alcuna "This is the kind of music people have benn trying to make for years". Noi ci siamo fatti due chiacchiere con questi simpatici musici danesi. Badun "Badun" (Rump Recordings) 01.Turban 02.Pulsen 03.Kompleks 04.Mælkebøtten 05.Søvnløs 06.Fyrtåm 07.Myg 08.Print 09.Nr.44 10.Nr.45 11.EF10

In your opinion, what's the reason Badun's engineers have putted thoseled light? Taken from a traffic light or from Rastafarian flag? ;)It's how the robot knows when to walk, wait and stop. The visual feedback is for the people, who needs to get out of the way when the light turns green, and the robot walks.

Where could I buy some seeds for that tree (as I like those leafs very much)?You can buy it in discoland, but we bought the tree in the 70´s,- probably sold out by now.Check it on ebay, maybe you're lucky.

Damn it! Let's be serious... I found your music very peaceful andsuspensive. Do you perform on live stage?Yes, we could talk forever about what we do on stage, but we will keep shot. We use a lot of energy preparing our live setups. We have a very free approach to playing live,- the drums, bass etc. varies greatly between each performance. The Laptops runs in perfect sampletight sync, with homemade software realized thru endless hours of MaxMSP programming. We make a great effort to keep our performances in constant evolution.

What about your equipment?We got a studio in the middle of aarhus. we use lots of old gear likevibrafone, guitars, rhodes, wurlitser, different types of drums, sinusgenerators, varies effects, lot of software ( i.e. Logic, MaxMSP, Supercollider, Live and more), and not forget our amazing danish microphones by Bryel & Kjær...

Do you improvise or do you follow a particular way to "assemble" yoursuites ? It's some where in between. A lot of the music is build on improvisation,but we have a certain taste, a set of rules and some structures we like to follow,within these rules we have absolute freedom.

Where did you take the vocal sample in Kompleks from?It's from an English TV program from the 90´s where the government in UKment that the rave culture was going out of control. A funny story. Like mentied before we have rules and one is that we don't sample anything but ourselves,- this is the one exception.

What about your musical background?Don't really remember how we got here, where are we ?Aske has a background in Jazz music, with fretless bass as his main instrument. He is very quick with new instruments and responsible for a big part of the instrumental recordings in Badun. Aske is also spending a lot of time producing. Oliver has produced electronic music of many genres thru the years, mainly electronica & IDM. Oliver was the founder of Badun, and he has dedicated a lot of time to developing this project.Brian has been in electronic music for several years as well, producing genres from trance, techno, dub, electronica and now cyperjazz. Brian has created a lot of Badun's software tools, built on algorhythms based on music observations.

You said your ambitious aim is to create a new musical genre. How couldyou define?Well, it's very difficult to define a new musical genre, cause these a lack of words for what we are trying to achieve, but it is in our collective conscience mind.

Are you thinking about integrating audio and visual?Yes.

You already took part to renowned festivals such as Roskilde. Are thereany differences between live performances and studio sessions? What about audience's feedback?There's a lot of difference, but also similarities. It's is too hard to explain properly, but we also use stuff recorded when playing live for composing. We generally get very good feedback, when playing for the right crowd.

Hope to see you perform here or there! Are you planning a tour?Yes, we're on tour now in Denmark, and planning Germany, England & Japan so far.