Jazz electronically exhumed

We live in an age when haircuts and money supersede musical talent. Our country’s youth are enthralled by flashy imagery and the misguided conviction that the coolest people make the coolest music. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the hype-machine these days. How delightful is it, then, when a group of nascent jazz musicians burst onto the scene with incredible force and originality.

I use “jazz” only for lack of a better word because it is the genre this record most nearly approximates. My mini-tirade isn’t to suggest that jazz isn’t totally free of pretension. In its heyday, jazz was aural pretense. You may recall the famous yarn that Thelonious Monk actually instructed his band to play complex polyrhythms in an effort to scare all the white people out of the club.

Fast forward to 2012. Music theory has advanced to such a degree that, for the most part, jazz musicians only play for other jazz musicians. Thankfully, there are legions of youth that don’t buy into overwhelming meta-pretense and instead perform jazz covers of Waka Flocka Flame songs.

Wait, what? You read that correctly. The band is inaptly named BADBADNOTGOOD, and this record, BBNG2, is their second full-length offering. Sadly, their cover of “Hard in Da Paint” is nowhere to be found on this release.

But the hip-hop inclined will be relatively pleased to find a cover of hip-hop flavor-of-the-month Tyler, the Creator mashed up with a jazzy rendition of Gucci Mane’s “Lemonade.” Other music fans will find loosely translated covers of James Blake, My Bloody Valentine and Kanye West.

Unlike many jazz records, whose movements meander into each other with a drunk’s precision, BBNG2’s passages are crisp and easily differentiated. The array of instruments present on the record is welcoming also. You’ll find the standard arrangement of drums, bass and saxophone.

But also present is an ensemble of electronic instruments—Rhodes piano (which you might recognize if you’ve listened to any record from the ’70s), electronic drums and a Prophet ’08 synthesizer, a brick of machinery known in modern synthesis circles for its deep, rich analog.

Of these three, the electronic drums seem the most out of place on BBNG2. On the record’s opening track, “Earl,” the drums are too disjointed to be hip-hop, yet too tightly focused to be jazz. The track is something of a very loose cover of Earl Sweatshirt’s breakout hip-hop dirge of the same name.

Predictably, BADBADNOGOOD’s imaginings play out more in concept than a straight note-for-note interpolation. Sure enough, the “Earl” cover, like the original, sounds glitchy and slightly off-kilter until the rest of the instruments come in, when it really gets rolling.

This type of innovation is where BADBADNOGOOD really shines—their ability to take existing material, derive a concept from it and use that as the basis for their own unique creation. Personally, I celebrate Earl Sweatshirt’s very limited output, and I had to listen to BADBADNOGOOD’s version three times to hear its inner “Earl”-ness. For the rest of you casual hip-hop fans, forget I said anything and treat yourself to a jaunty nu-jazz tune.

With the advent of electronic instrumentation, many parts of BBNG2 venture into hip-hop territory and do a spectacular job. The track “UWM” comes to mind, as this track wouldn’t be out of place on a Roots album or on any record released by Ninja Tune or anticon. for that matter. Two tracks on the record feature saxophonist Leland Witty, and “UWM” is one. This track in particular is a standout.

The album is not without its disappointments. The record’s production is incredibly scatterbrained. Drums sound crisp on one track, and on the next they sound like a stick beating a paper bag. Sadly, this drum inconsistency comes in sudden bursts, so it sounds as if there are two halves to the record: the under-produced cutting-room-floor half and the polished half.

If you can get past these production gripes, however, you’re left with one hell of a jazz album, one that transcends several genres and is recorded by an invigorating cast. On the band’s website, they proudly declare that no one involved with the record is older than 21. Finally, your grandfather can finally stop lamenting about the music of today’s youth.