Psychedelic jazz band Badbadnotgood hit the studio in 2024 to release Mid Spiral. This year, the band went on the road, and they recently performed live at The Fillmore Silver Spring. They partnered with soul singer Baby Rose to tour not only Mid Spiral but their joint 2024 EP, Slow Burn.
Chris Castillo was there to photograph the show!
The following article is adapted from a press release.
Alexander Sowinski (drums), Chester Hansen (bass), and Leland Whitty (sax and woodwinds) recruited touring member Felix Fox-Pappas (keys) and guests for an intensive and productive one-week of recording at Valentine Studios in Los Angeles. The result of those sessions: The Mid Spiral series, originally released as three parts — Chaos, Order, and Growth — digitally earlier this year, and now collected altogether on a double LP and CD.
On May 5 at The Fillmore Silver Spring, Badbadnotgood returned to their roots of instrumental jazz while once again pushing the boundaries of how they cross pollinate genres, incorporating their love of hip-hop, neo-soul, psychedelic, funk, and more. They played two sets, separated by a six-song set consisting of the tracks from Slow Burn with Baby Rose (Jasmine Rose Wilson).
Watch the official music visualizer for “Slow Burn” by Baby Rose produced by Badbadnotgood on YouTube:
Like musical theatre and scripted television, jazz and hip-hop are uniquely, undeniably North American art forms. Though the latter genre was born out of funk and disco in the late 1970s, many of its landmark artists embody the ethos of jazz: loose, visceral, instinctive. Some hip-hop acts — A Tribe Called Quest, or more recently Kendrick Lamar — have successfully repurposed jazz, but the older genre has seldom made successful inroads into new generations of rap fans. And that’s what makes Badbadnotgood, the four-piece, Toronto-bred jazz outfit that has melded jazz and instrumental hip-hop into something elusive, something altogether their own, so unique.
Here are some photos of Baby Rose and BADBADNOTGOOD performing live at The Fillmore Silver Spring on May 5, 2025. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Chris Castillo.
