About

A TAV Curator's Pick.

BADBADNOTGOOD is a young supremely talented trio of musicians made up of Matthew Tavares on keys, Chester Hansen on bass, and Alex Sowinski on drums. Since their inception at Humber College’s Music Performance program in 2011, the three have challenged the rule book on improvised instrumental music and taken jazz tradition into the future.

With early champions including acclaimed BBC broadcaster Gilles Peterson and Tyler The Creator who helped fuel their discovery with a series of live jams that instantly went viral and dubbed them the “Odd Trio”, the band released their first EP BBNG in June 2011 to wide praise. The marriage of jazz virtuosity and hip hop source material offered a fresh take on the traditional “standard” applied to hip hop classics by taking on choice cuts from the golden era rap cannon and writing inspired arrangements for them instead of one-dimensional covers.

The band hit a landmark by introducing original material into their composi- tions with BBNG2 in 2012. New songs like “Rotten Decay”, “Vices” or “UWM” carried on the proud heritage of musical juxtaposition by bringing together jazz, hip hop, punk, and dance music into vigorous balance. Since then, they’ve won praise from the four corners of the globe and collaborated with Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt, MF Doom, Pharaoh Monch and RZA among many. Their no- torious live performances have brought fans across the whole musical spectrum together, taking the band around the world from Coachella to Glastonbury.

Now, the inseparable friends are prepping to release their biggest project to date III on prodigious young label Innovative Leisure, a highly-anticipated project ushering in the group’s newest explorations which are proving to be limitless. – Innovative Leisure

“Hip-hop’s links with jazz reach back to Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets, but does jazz love hip-hop back? Badbadnotgood certainly do: the instrumental trio scored work with Frank Ocean, Tyler, The Creator and RZA after their Odd Future cover during a performance exam at jazz college failed to wow the assembled panel of judges but succeeded in wowing the internet. Sounds like the plot to every bad ‘street dancing’ film ever, but new album ‘III’ is a fluid, inventive affair. Shades of post-rock make the whole feel oddly conservative in parts, but ‘Can’t Leave The Night’ sounds like a trap DJ Shadow, and ‘Hedron’ boasts imagination to match the band’s spectacular musicianship. “ – NME

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