What's the next step after cutting your most accomplished effort to date? For Badge Époque Ensemble, the horizon beyond last year's Clouds of Joy came into view with a Chance of Reign — an effort part remix album, part beat tape that saw the group's immensely detailed third LP chopped up and sampled by Mikhail Galkin of Toronto's Lammping, select results then landing with local microphone fiends like Theo3 and Roshin, NYC underground king O.C. and one of the most in-demand voices of rap recency in Detroit's Boldy James.
Not unlike prolific rap producers or MCs, Badge make a point to offer something of a peek behind the curtain of creativity with shorter collections shared between full-length albums. Completing a trilogy with Nature, Man & Woman and Future, Past & Present, Air, Light & Harmony — BÉE's first fully instrumental release — finds the group recycling and resampling snippets from albums past for a set feeling much like a breeze that has pushed the Clouds away.
Bandleader Maximilian Turnbull has described the material of Air, Light & Harmony "more sketch than painting," but there are some brushstrokes of brilliance here in moments more fully fleshed-out. The opening title track includes the memorable melodics that have become their signature, accented by auxiliary percussion and freewheeling vibraphone and guitar solos. "Bowls," meanwhile, has its delicate keys and percussion anchored by delicious fretless bass, a key change giving way to some meditative solos. "Child Is the Father of His Dream" first introduces a plaintive guitar soon accompanied by sympathetic flute, each instrument soon reaching skyward with an ascendant melody to close on a plateau hinting at a nightmare to come.
Insofar as Air, Light & Harmony's samples are concerned, "Goding of Think" and "Thinking of God" are two inclusions revolving around the same drifting loop, sounding as if it were bounced straight from an MPC. The songs are respective solo spots for saxophonist Karen Ng and flautist Alia O'Brien, the former's mind-expanding alto sax noodling nearly unrecognizable in its distorted state, and the latter's starting gently before being blown into forceful free jazz territory. Eerie closer "Stalled In Genesis" opens with layered microsampled vocal stems before the fear is shed through O'Brien's flute divebombs and Jay Anderson's knocking drums.
Then, there are gems ripe for sampling. The distinct sections of "Spider Perched on an Illusion" — a colourful, clavinet-led hook and a gentler acoustic groove marked by clever call-and-response between instruments — feel readymade to loop, while the band's take on Henry Mancini's "Lujon" (which the biggest Badge fiends will recognize from last year's detailed box set La Première Époque) is more original than any of the trap-styled reworks soundtracking social media posts right now, its final minute accented by an exquisite drum groove.
Like Badge Époque Ensemble's stylistic forebears have found their jazz-funk compositions loaded into DAWs and samplers by producers at every level, it isn't hard to imagine the same happening with Air, Light & Harmony.
(Telephone Explosion)Not unlike prolific rap producers or MCs, Badge make a point to offer something of a peek behind the curtain of creativity with shorter collections shared between full-length albums. Completing a trilogy with Nature, Man & Woman and Future, Past & Present, Air, Light & Harmony — BÉE's first fully instrumental release — finds the group recycling and resampling snippets from albums past for a set feeling much like a breeze that has pushed the Clouds away.
Bandleader Maximilian Turnbull has described the material of Air, Light & Harmony "more sketch than painting," but there are some brushstrokes of brilliance here in moments more fully fleshed-out. The opening title track includes the memorable melodics that have become their signature, accented by auxiliary percussion and freewheeling vibraphone and guitar solos. "Bowls," meanwhile, has its delicate keys and percussion anchored by delicious fretless bass, a key change giving way to some meditative solos. "Child Is the Father of His Dream" first introduces a plaintive guitar soon accompanied by sympathetic flute, each instrument soon reaching skyward with an ascendant melody to close on a plateau hinting at a nightmare to come.
Insofar as Air, Light & Harmony's samples are concerned, "Goding of Think" and "Thinking of God" are two inclusions revolving around the same drifting loop, sounding as if it were bounced straight from an MPC. The songs are respective solo spots for saxophonist Karen Ng and flautist Alia O'Brien, the former's mind-expanding alto sax noodling nearly unrecognizable in its distorted state, and the latter's starting gently before being blown into forceful free jazz territory. Eerie closer "Stalled In Genesis" opens with layered microsampled vocal stems before the fear is shed through O'Brien's flute divebombs and Jay Anderson's knocking drums.
Then, there are gems ripe for sampling. The distinct sections of "Spider Perched on an Illusion" — a colourful, clavinet-led hook and a gentler acoustic groove marked by clever call-and-response between instruments — feel readymade to loop, while the band's take on Henry Mancini's "Lujon" (which the biggest Badge fiends will recognize from last year's detailed box set La Première Époque) is more original than any of the trap-styled reworks soundtracking social media posts right now, its final minute accented by an exquisite drum groove.
Like Badge Époque Ensemble's stylistic forebears have found their jazz-funk compositions loaded into DAWs and samplers by producers at every level, it isn't hard to imagine the same happening with Air, Light & Harmony.
