Recording of the Week, DOMi & JD BECK- NOT TiGHT

Remember the first few months of lockdown in 2020? Everyone holed up at home, scheduling Zoom parties with friends and family (oh how quickly the novelty wore off), impulse-buying stuff online… any stuff, just to relieve the boredom, and recieving more YouTube links than was humanly possible to ever watch. A pal sent me a clip that really did make an impression, of an 18-year-old keyboard-playing French girl, and a hyperactive 14-year-old American lad on drums, playing a ditty tastefully titled “u can sniff my butt”. It was only a minute long, and cut off midway, but it sounded like a fascinating mash-up of Squarepusher style splattered drill’n’bass with Bitches Brew-era Corea and Jarrett electric piano keys. Without the visuals you might have thought the drums were programmed, but no, this kid was actually playing them real time, and the girl was tunefully matching each and every hairpin bend. I went down a bit of rabbit-hole with these two for a while, hoovering up clips of them playing in the bathroom, or covering ‘My Favourite Things’ on stage. Fast-forward two years, and I’m looking for something to review and come across the debut album from DOMi & JD BECK, with what looks like a couple of the Scooby-Doo gang on the cover. Lo and behold, within 5 seconds of the sounds tumbling out of the speaker I knew it must be the self-same YouTube duo, so unmistakable is their turbo-charged sound. The point of my pre-amble? I’m not entirely sure, but we get to see so many novelty clips, out of context, so it’s reassuring that sometimes you can enjoy something, join the dots and eventually hold in your hand their finished debut album on Blue Note (it’s called NOT TiGHT by the way.)

Domi, born Domitille Degalle in Metz, north-east France, grew up in a jazz-loving household, was enrolled in the Conservatoire Régional du Grand Nancy at the age of 5, then the Conservatoire de Paris, followed by Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music. Although she was studying classical piano it was the freedom of jazz that most appealed to her. Meanwhile in Dallas, JD BECK was also lured away from the strictures of classical music to the abandon of jazz drumming. Spotted at a jam session in Dallas, Beck spent some time with Erykah Badu’s band, whilst various clips of Domi went viral, which led up to them meeting at a music trade show in 2018. Soon Domi was hanging out with Beck in Dallas, where many of those early YouTube clips were shot, thus capturing the attention of luminaries of the current jazz/hip-hop/soul scene such as Thundercat and Anderson .Paak - both of whom appear on Not Tight (they were also the first signees to Paak’s new label).

I was curious if Domi & BECK would try to sustain the manic energy levels of those short clips over the course of an album, if the music would hold up without the visuals, and would it keep my attention? On the whole it does, although it took a couple of listens to properly digest. Things get off to a cracking start with ‘WHATUP’, a delightful two and a half minutes of the duo doing their thing exceptionally well. Presumably it was recorded in one take, and if so Domi’s ambidextrous synth bass runs alongside the electric piano lines are nothing short of breathtaking, all providing grist for Beck to dig into. It segues into the sunny little melody of ‘SMiLE’ with real panache. The two consecutive appearances from Thundercat are an early highlight, firstly featuring his vocals on the smooth yet frenetic ‘BOWLiNG’, followed by a delicious serving of his phenomenal skill on bass guitar. Rather than dominating proceedings, he inspires his young proteges to ever more feats of dexterity, especially Beck’s plethora of tiny fills and about-turns.

Although the other guest spots don’t quite inspire the duo to the heights of the Thundercat tracks, they all add much needed variety to the record. It would have been nice to hear Mac DeMarco’s singular guitar textures make an appearance, as his vocals are rather beige in this context, but at worst the track is inoffensive. Herbie Hancock invokes the vocoded ghost of ‘I Thought It Was You’ on ‘Moon’, and Anderson .Paak flows pleasantly enough on ‘TAKE A CHANCE’. In general though the vocals by the twosome are actually more impactful than their starry guests, especially ‘U DON’T HAVE TO ROB ME’.

And the collection ends with ‘SNiFF’, a sanitised version of that YouTube clip I watched in lockdown. It still holds up as an ideal entry-point into the dayglo world of DOMi and JD BECK. I’ve heard a few grumbles from certain quarters that NOT TiGHT is unfocussed, and doesn’t offer enough variety, but this is the debut from 19 and 21 year olds, both of whom have too many ideas bursting out of them. I’d suggest listening to this in three of four track chunks, and focusing on the astounding things they are doing moment to moment, rather than expecting a finished masterpiece to rank alongside Head Hunters. This is only the opening salvo, so it will be fascinating to see where the pair go from here.