Gig review: Badbadnotgood, Edinburgh

OF ALL the ways Canada Day must have been marked on Monday, there can have been few more surreal than BadBadNotGood bassist Chester Hansen’s, shall we say loose, solo interpretation of his native land’s national anthem.

Badbadnotgood

Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh

* * * * *

Flying the flag for the ever-inventive Canuck music scene, this Toronto trio are helping transcend genre boundaries.

Much as their unkemptly hipster looks deceive, BBNG are fundamentally a virtuoso jazz trio – you could tell that much out from Alexander Sowinski’s skittering off-kilter drum patterns, and especially keys player Matthew A Tavares’s intuitively fluid electric piano and synthesiser playing. But it’s jazz with punk-rock spirit and hip-hop style and it threatens to teach the opposing genres how much they can learn from each other. Jazzers: don’t be such squares. Hip-hoppers and punks: be more musical.

BBNG broke out through their association with ground-breaking, controversial LA hip-hop collective Odd Future, several members of which – Tyler, The Creator, Frank Ocean and Earl Sweatshirt – BBNG have backed live and on record, and with whom they share a similar taste in surrealist humour (they sometimes wear pig masks live).

Scots-Canadian relations were cemented with a frenzied and deliriously fun take on Bugg’n by TNGHT, half of which collaboration, producer Hudson Mohawke, hails from Glasgow. “Let’s all bug the f**k out Edinburgh,” bellowed Sowinski, as he wound its shuddering beat up one last time for the by-now intensely moshing young crowd. “Happy Canada Day!”