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SELF HELP OUT NOVEMBER 20, 2020 VIA TELEPHONE EXPLOSION
PRE-ORDER SELF HELP HERE
“spirals from jazzy sax-laden tropicalia into an easy listening guitar jam worthy of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky without losing its eclectic undercurrent” Stereogum
“Max Turnbull’s jazz-funk ensemble is back with its sophomore album. Like the last, it’s full of lush grooves from its many members,, shape-shifting through psych, prog, R&B, heady hip-hop production touches and yacht rock.” NOW
Photo Credit : Meg Remy & Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Toronto’s Badge Époque Ensemble are today sharing “Just Space For Light” featuring Jennifer Castle from their upcoming LP, Self Help. The song “weaves a few BÉE themes together,” says Max Turnbull. “The collision of disparate moods between sections, lyrics which touch on the meditative experience, and collaboration with a distinctive vocalist; in this case Jennifer Castle, who's soulful presence on our album is a blessing.”
LISTEN AND SHARE “JUST SPACE FOR LIGHT” HERE
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Out November 20, 2020 on Telephone Explosion Records, Self Help was recorded live in the months before lockdown, Self Help is an exploratory record that dances across time and genre, guided by fidgety miniatures and jazz inflected collage. While constructed from the inspiration of soul, funk and film music, BÉE mediate those influences having first digested them through the productions of Madlib and the RZA. Throughout, the band pool together their instrumental chops, moving from fluid and serpentine R&B to meditative, minimalistic piano, evoking a contrast of virtuosity and self-surrender.
A sticker on the sleeve tells us Self Help “combines jazz-funk and mysticism,” a signpost to where its musical and spiritual concerns align. The jazz-funk component translates to arresting hooks in sideways song forms: echoes of Gainsbourg spooled through Azymuth-style Brazilian jazz and punctuated by the whip and snap of Steely Dan. “The Sound Where My Head Was”, the instrumental centrepiece, exemplifies present-wave jazz but also ancient sounds, giving off the mothballed air of a Hiroshi Yoshimura record in a library-music archive.
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Self Help’s mysticism emerges in broad and specific ways, denoting not only a search beyond cliché and intellect but also an inquiry into the beat, the spirit, the one will. This isn’t new territory for them: Turnbull – the artist formerly known as Slim Twig, who writes and performs with U.S. Girls and various other Toronto concerns – named the group’s Nature, Man & Woman EP after the Alan Watts book. Building these songs from his drafts over three weekends at Toronto’s Palace Sound studio, the ensemble was free to tap out of the city and into some other place, taking up residence in a collective mind maze.
The album produces, in equal measure, familiar surprises and the surprisingly familiar. Intoxicated jazz riffs swerve left at phantom intersections. Rhythms cut loose and tie you in knots. But wired into each song is a sense of gentle accumulation, making every featherlight flourish weigh a ton.
Album closer “Extinct Commune” finds Turnbull deserted at the piano, playing phrases of meditative minimalism taking after the composer Joanna Brouk. For all the record’s reach, it is these contrasting quiet moments that bring Self Help’s communal spirit into focus.
LISTEN AND SHARE “SING A SILENT GOSPEL” FT. MEG REMY AND DOROTHEA PAAS HERE
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A note on personnel: Badge Époque Ensemble now has a seventh member in Karen Ng, the saxophonist and sometime collaborator of Do Make Say Think, Feist, and others. In BÉE, Ng joins Chris Bezant and Giosuè Rosati, her bandmates in the Andy Shauf live band, as well as U.S. Girls co-conspirators Turnbull and Ed Squires, and other Torontonian cross-pollinators listed below. Guest vocalists across Self Help include Meg Remy, who sings with Dorothea Paas on the opener, James Baley, and Toronto singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle on the remarkable “Just Space for Light”.
Words by: Jazz Monroe
Badge Époque Ensemble is:
Jay Anderson: Drum Kit / Chris Bezant: Guitar / Karen Ng: Saxophone / Alia O’Brien: Flute / Ed Squires: Conga, percussion / Giosuè Rosati: Bass / Maximilian ‘Twig’ Turnbull: Fender Rhodes, clavinet, synthesizers
PRAISE FOR BADGE ÉPOQUE ENSEMBLE
“Nature, Man & Woman is an immersive trip in the spirit of Alice Coltrane. "Badge Theme" crackles for its entire 14-minute runtime, while "Zealous Child" turns nimbly on multiple tempo changes and a breezy vocal from Dorothea Paas" Exclaim! 8/10
"Drawing on prog, psych, and funk with flute at its forefront, the band sounds like a dusty dollar bin record with grooves scorching hot enough to melt unsuspecting minds." Bandcamp
"The jazzy, progressive instrumental sextet are experts in groove, building each one as a vessel for adventurous melodies that snake from restless funk to wild explosions of dramatic psych"
- NOW Magazine
“Twig’s writing is sure to appeal to anyone who likes late-’60s prog from the Canterbury scene”
- Vancouver Sun
“...trippy groovefest...that takes more twists and turns than a bag of pretzels” - Tinnitist
"Will throw you back into a time when pop orchestration was king"
- Laurie Brown’s Pondercast
