BADBADNOTGOOD as part of WayHome at Burl’s Creek Park (180 8th Line South, Oro Medonte), Saturday (July 23), 7 pm. $110-$289. wayhome.com.
When BADBADNOTGOOD were recording their fourth album, IV, their MO in the studio was “come through, vibe out.”
After spending years recording in their apartments, parents’ basements and rented studios in Toronto, New York and Los Angeles, the Toronto-based four-piece now have a dedicated studio space to call home.
Keyboardist Matthew Tavares, drummer Alex Sowinski, bassist Chester Hansen and saxophonist Leland Whitty – who joined as a full-time member last year – took over a back-alley spot from the Cowboy Junkies two years ago and spent three months transforming the concrete room with hardwood.
They’ve dubbed it Studio 69, but the dimly lit rehearsal room feels more homey than glam. Persian rugs cover the floor, and the corners are crammed with records, microphones and analog gear they and producer Frank Dukes – who shares the space – have acquired from Craigslist and estate sales.
While working in the Menahan Street Band’s Brooklyn studio on Sour Soul, their joint album with Ghostface Killah, BBNG realized they needed a dedicated space to expand their capabilities.
“If we go to another studio, it feels strange. You can write things that sound the same, but it’s not the same vibe,” says Tavares. “Our music is an amalgamation of all this weird gear from different eras that would never normally go together.”
Since IV is the first BBNG album entirely recorded in Studio 69, it’s the most definitive account of that sound and the musical ethos they want to infuse into the city’s scene – and the wider musical landscape.
The space is a focal point not only for BBNG’s extended family of Canadian collaborators – which includes rising soul singers Charlotte Day Wilson and Daniel Caesar, Montreal production wiz Kaytranada, experimental electronic act Kilimanjaro and R&B singer/songwriter River Tiber – but a destination for Americans like Mick Jenkins, GoldLink and Kali Uchis, all of whom have dropped by to record.
If Drake’s success has made Toronto a destination for A-list hip-hop and R&B acts in need of radio hits, BBNG’s connections in the indie hip-hop, rock and pop worlds are helping to foster a parallel scene – with Dukes as the connector between the two.
One day Kaytra might stop by to record with BBNG (they have 30 to 40 unreleased tracks in the can), the next Dukes and producer Boi-1da might be working on drum sounds for a Rihanna song.
“There’s an idea that the city has a sound and all these artists are putting it on the map, but if you think about what’s happened in New York, Atlanta or L.A., not everyone was working together,” says Sowinski. “They all had their owns spaces – and a lot of them were rental spaces – but the collective sound of artists putting out music is the movement.
“In that way we’re building a sound in the city – or part of a sound that’s a continuum.”
When NOW visits Studio 69, the vibe is surprisingly leisurely despite BBNG’s having released a hotly anticipated album days earlier. Save for a pop-up album release party the week before, they’ve mostly been catching up with family and girlfriends. After touring for five months solid, they want to spend most of the year in their studio.
“We’re trying to make a little bit of a transition,” explains Sowinski. “We’ve been grinding things out for this album, so we’re trying to create some space for general life stuff.”
Tavares, Sowinksi and Hansen met studying jazz at Humber College. In 2011, they covered Odd Future as part of a school test piece and posted it on YouTube. The video went viral, and BBNG quickly earned a rep as that jazz band that plays hip-hop covers and gets kids moshing.
Their success dovetailed with the jazz resurgence in hip-hop. They’ve backed and recorded with Talib Kweli, Earl Sweatshirt and Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), who recently invited them to collaborate onstage after learning they were in South Africa for the Cape Town Jazz Festival.
In interviews to promote IV, BBNG have avoided calling themselves a jazz group. The album is their first to feature collaborations with guests like Sam Herring of Future Islands (Time Moves Slow) and Day Wilson (In Your Eyes), who push IV into sultry, soulful directions, yet BBNG’s underlying language in the studio is jazz.
“People have seen that we’ve been classified as jazz and been like, ‘Oh, this isn’t real jazz.’ It puts you in a bind, but inherently we use the jazz approach,” says Tavares. “The way we talk about chords and write all comes from a jazz lineage. Musically, the output isn’t be-bop or stuff obviously classified as jazz. So that’s where it is: kind of jazzish.”
The dominant sound on IV is the Yamaha CS-60, a vintage synth the band prefers for its human-like imperfections. “It sounds close to the thing it’s trying to emulate, but not in a way that’s simulacra,” explains Tavares.
In the back room, the band members gather around their 70s-era console (that Tavares and Dukes bought online and drove up from Philly), which sits next to an 80s reel-to-reel tape machine.
As they play B-sides and other unreleased material off a laptop, 70s musical references become apparent. There’s a slow disco burner featuring Uchis, a soul ballad sung by Herring that’d be right at home on the Jackie Brown soundtrack, and a psyched-out Curtis Mayfieldesque track they cut for Jenkins’s next LP.
Over a dirty funk bass line, the Chicago MC’s falsetto gasps, “I can’t breathe” in reference to Eric Garner’s final words as New York City police officers put him in a chokehold. Jenkins is known as a rapper, but it was through jamming together in the studio – less common in an era when musicians and singers can collaborate remotely – that BBNG realized he could sing.
Studio 69 affords them that kind of spontaneity.
“What’s great about having a studio that isn’t a million-dollar studio is that no other studio sounds like it,” says Tavares. “Million-dollar studios sound like million-dollar studios. To get the sounds of our records, you need to be in this space.”
kevinr@nowtoronto.com | @kevinritchie
