THE BADBADNOTGOOD LIFE: ECLECTIC JAZZ FOR HIP-HOP HEADS
“Hip-hop is what links us.”
CHESTER HANSEN, BADBADNOTGOOD
“NONE OF THIS would have been possible without the internet,” says Chester Hansen. The bassist in Toronto trio BADBADNOTGOOD still seems shellshocked at how a group of friends at the Canadian city’s Humber College jazz programme went from playing interpolations of Odd Future as part of their course work (dismissed as “devoid of musical merit”) to briefly becoming the Los Angeles rap collective’s backing band, after a friend uploaded a clip to YouTube.
By the time they had knocked off 2011’s debut BBNG in under three hours – a covers-heavy affair that mashed up instrumental versions of Joy Division and Gang Starr tunes – they “realised we could do this full-time, which was just crazy”.
Five breakneck years of touring and ● recording at an old-fashioned album-per-year tempo followed, as BBNG built a formidable cult following by blending indie, electronica, classic rock and R&B into their beat-driven party.
Memories of touring put them in a reflective mood when they reconnected for new album Talk Memory, a return to pure instrumentals after 2016’s IV, packed as it was with guest vocalists.
“It was the most concise process we’ve ever had, even though it took so long,” says Hansen of Talk Memory’s two-year gestation.
“We wanted some thematic things recurring and used a more dialled-back instrument palette,” adds Leland Whitty, who joined Hansen and drummer Alex Sowinski in 2016, and whose frenetic guitar and sax work is a key presence on the new record. Talk
Memory veers from jazz sprints to sprawling prog and nimble chamber symphonies, with dreamy string arrangements courtesy of Brazilian samba auteur Arthur Verocai.
It all prompts the question, though: what music do BADBADNOTGOOD actually make? Is it jazz? Hansen and Whitty are wary of easy pigeonholing.
“I don’t know if I would call us a jazz band,” says Hansen. “Hip-hop is what links us, although on this record we’ve gone deeper into our jazz roots.”
Whitty is similarly circumspect: “It’s more about using the jazz approach rather than what the genre is typically defined as.”
Either way, BBNG’s willingness to explore and blur boundaries is undimmed. “Apart from the ones we put on ourselves, we have no limitations,” Hansen concludes. “We don’t have to worry about fitting into a certain bracket, and we’ve somehow collected thousands of fans that support us no matter what direction we go.”
BADBADNOTGOOD’s Talk Memory is released by XL on October 8.