BADBADNOTGOOD with special guest Cleo Reed
This spring, BADBADNOTGOOD will be bringing their genre defying album, Mid Spiral suite: Chaos, Order and Growth, on the road, featuring a special performance with Baby Rose, of their joint EP, Slow Burn. The trio called on some of their closest friends and collaborators, BADBADNOTGOOD touring member Felix Fox-Pappas (keys) and a few key-players in the Toronto jazz scene including Kaelin Murphy (trumpet), Juan Carlos Medrano Magallenes (percussion) and LA musician Tyler Lott (guitar), for an intensive and productive one-week of recording at Valentine Studios in Los Angeles in February 2024. The result is the Mid Spiral suite: Chaos, Order and Growth, which will be performed along with live reinterpretations of their previous releases.
The Mid Spiral suite exploits instrumental jazz at its core allowing for BADBADNOTGOOD to continue to push the boundaries of how they integrate a limitless range of genres and musicianship into their compositions. For the Valentine sessions, the trio invited additional musicians to provide more voices of instrumentation, resulting in a deeply collaborative and expansive new sound. As the trio sifted through the weeks’ worth of material, it was clear that three distinct moods emerged, a deeper reflection of where the musicians are within their own personal lives, along with the state of the wider world: Chaos, Order, and Growth.
Since the release of their late-2021 acclaimed album Talk Memory, BADBADNOTGOOD has been steady at work. The alt-jazz ensemble also received their fifth GRAMMY nomination, this time for Best Remixed Recording for their remix of Turnstile’s “Alien Love Call,” taken from the New Heart Designs EP.
In January BADBADNOTGOOD released “Take What’s Given,” featuring emerging Houston vocalist reggie, which followed a string of one-off singles with collaborators including Charlotte Day Wilson on “Sleeper,” 1999 WRITE THE FUTURE, Westside Gunn plus Conway The Machine on “MiNt cHoCoLaTe” and Jonah Yano on “the ordinary is ordinary because it ordinarily repeats.” Further, BADBADNOTGOOD contributed to Daniel Caesar’s 2023 album Never Enough, worked with rising artist Elmiene on an edit of his single “Marking My Time” and contributed to the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense tribute album with a cover of “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” with Norah Jones.
Cleo Reed
A student of Black underground sound and intention, Cleo Reed (née Ella Josephine Julia Moore) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice uses participatory art, music composition, instrument-making, bandleading, installation, and fabric arts. Raised in NYC and DC, Reed’s background ranges from classical training at Harlem School of the Arts, to studying sound engineering & design at Berklee College of Music.
Reed’s 2025 LP CUNTRY is a sprawling folk-electronic offering exploring the rage that comes from grappling with the grips of labor — both on the body and in the American workplace. A double LP, Side A pulls influence from the canon of American work songs — blues, soul, folk, and country. Side B, sonically dystopian and electronic forward, references the format with a more rap-centric approach. The dueling sides symbolize the binary, and the opposing forces represented in Reed’s NYC upbringing vs. their family’s southern lineage.
CUNTRY was named a top album of 2025 from Pitchfork, Stereogum, That Good Sh*t, and NPR Music. Reed was included in Dazed magazine’s iconic Dazed 100 list. Reed has performed at the Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center, Afropunk, New Orleans Jazz Festival, Le Banlieue Bleues, and more. Reed has supported US, UK & European tour dates with Sudan Archives, Nick Hakim, Armand Hammer, and Annahstasia, amongst others. Reed is a young, visionary artist with a singular voice and an unwavering commitment to honoring those that came before while subverting the status quo.
