Toronto’s BadBadNotGood are the indie darlings of instrumental music, and their last album, 2016’s IV, turned their blizzards of jazz, boom-bap, soul, psych-rock and Brazilian pop into radio-friendly tracks via a range of guest vocalists. It’s clear, however, from the nine-minute odyssey of crushing riffage and creeping spectral dread that opens their fifth album, Talk Memory – Signal from the Noise, with added Buchla blooping from Floating Points – that this is an expansive departure.
A bit like FloPo’s own Mercury-nominated Promises, Talk Memory stretches form and avoids convention; it’s theatrical, genre-averse and caught between shimmery optimism and bursting intensity. It makes sense that some of BBNG were working on a film soundtrack around the same time: lush, widescreen strings are everywhere, notably on the careening City of Mirrors and the sweet, Minnie Riperton-ish soul of Love Proceeding (with some throaty sax replacing the whistling notes).
The music of cult Rio-born fusionist Arthur Verocai, who worked with a 30-person orchestra on his 1972 debut, is a guiding light, and he appears in person on standout Beside April. Elsewhere, ambient pioneer Laraaji and harpist Brandee Younger lend a meditative hand (the latter’s stunning ripples close the album).
The album is meandering in places, evoking a sense of the unknown that’s become so familiar in 2021, but there’s a sense that the trio want to bring their growing fanbase with them into a new dimension. It will reward those who come along for the ride.
