The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form appeared after a period of intensive and extensive collaboration for Matmos' Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. It arrived during the same year as Daniel's Soft Pink Truth album Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase?, which boasted an impressive number of contributors that pales in comparison to this project. Matmos invited 99 musicians and artists to give them any type of recording they wanted, as long as it was at the tempo of 99 beats per minute. Daniel and Schmidt then combined these offerings into a massive, three-hour-long triptych that's as conceptually rigorous and engaging as anything they've created during their career.