DOMi & JD BECK NOT TiGHT 180g LP

JazzTimes The Top 40 Jazz Albums of 2022 - Rated 39/40!

French keyboardist DOMi & American drummer JD BECK release their highly anticipated debut album NOT TiGHT on Anderson .Paak's new label, APESHIT INC in partnership with Blue Note Records. Featuring special guests .Paak, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Herbie Hancock, Thundercat, Mac DeMarco, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, the album exemplifies their trailblazing take on jazz. The New York Times hailed them as simultaneously "freakishly complex and virtuosic" and "relentlessly melodic."

To date, if you wanted to learn about DOMi & JD BECK - the internet's most hyped jazz duo - you had to visit their website, click a rat playing saxophone, and read a story about a 12-year-old physicist (DOMi Louna) and a 6-year-old sheep investigator (JD Beck). Let's fix that. "My philosophy of life is don't take shit too seriously," says DOMi Louna, born Domitille Degalle. And that's fair. But the vibrant world she and her collaborator have given us demands exploration.

They reveal a bit more on their Instagram profiles, via clips of their jams, with JD on a simple drum kit and DOMi Louna on MIDI keys. She favors sounds that evoke '70s jazz fusion and the colorful blips of 2000s Pokémon soundtracks, while he tunes and plays his snare in ways that can sound electronic, channeling IDM and boom bap. Sometimes they're stuffed into a bathroom and sometimes the drums are muffled by pretzels stacked on the hi-hat, or toilet paper tossed on the snare. Their music finds both humor and greatness in harmonic complexity and rhythmic shiftiness, abruptly adopting and ditching tempos, toying with time signatures, and sneaking extra beats into bridges.

The collaboration began under silly circumstances. DOMi Louna was a teen protegé at Berklee by way of the Paris Conservatory; JD, four years her junior, had gigged since grade school around his hometown, Dallas - first in producer Jah-Born's band where he duetted with MPC beatmakers and DJs spinning Dilla. In 2018, they were both invited to join an ensemble performing at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) trade show and played in a room full of blaring instrumental demos, surrounded by a chaotic din. "It was so bad, we couldn't hear anything," JD laughs. They bonded over gauche keyboard effects and mom jokes, and a more audible jam that night sparked interest in working more.

Along the ride, DOMi & JD BECK have sat in with Herbie Hancock and backed Thundercat, Ariana Grande, Mac DeMarco, Eric André, and more. They also co-wrote "Skate" on .Paak's GRAMMY-winning album with Bruno Mars as Silk Sonic.