Badge Époque Ensemble
Clouds of Joy
The Badge Époque Ensemble return to Telephone Explosion Records with a new LP, Clouds of Joy. Featuring three vocal-led compositions, three instrumentals and three choral arrangements, this new album presents the Ensemble’s most ambitious, mature and engaging material to date. Clouds represents a shift from the group’s previous sonic excursions into the worlds of vintage soundtrack grooves and early electric jazz towards a more era-ambiguous, complex and all-encompassing approach to arrangement …
Scroll
Before forming outer limits jazz-rock outfit Badge Époque Ensemble, Max Turnbull masterminded the oddball pop persona Slim Twig, wrote and performed with U.S. Girls, and moonlighted in varyingly experimental groups across his native Toronto. While this was going on, the devout cratedigger had his third eye trained on another project—one that would span the breadth of his mercurial creativity. This “journal album,” as he puts it, is titled Scroll, and it collages together the pearls of Turnbull’s…
Future, Past & Present
Barely a season passed in 2019 between the release of Badge Époque Ensemble’s self titled debut album, and its follow up, the disco-sleeved 12” Nature, Man & Woman. Now, 3 months on from the release of the group’s acclaimed sophomore album Self Help, we find them repeating the trick with a surprise fourth title on Telephone Explosion Records, the fittingly titled Future, Past & Present. A compilation of sorts, the album collects instrumental, alternate mix versions of all BÉE songs which origina…
Badge Époque Ensemble
* 2020 Repress * Flute, congas, bass, drums, guitar and clavinet; this unconventional arrangement of instruments intertwine to form the debut album by Badge Époque Ensemble - a group of creative improvisers assembled to perform new, largely instrumental compositions by Maximilian ‘Twig’ Turnbull (formerly Slim Twig). Badge employs an eclectic cast of characters from the Toronto underground music scene, whose combined experience would take pages to spell out. It includes stints accompanying songw…
Self Help
Telephone Explosion presents Self Help by Badge Époque Ensemble. Recorded live at Palace Sound October 2019 - March 2020. Produced & Mixed by Steve Chahley, Tony Price & Twig at That 70's Basement. Engineered by Steve Chahley and mastered by Sarah Register.
Jay Anderson - Drum kitChris Bezant - GuitarKaren Ng - SaxophoneAlia O'Brien - FluteEd Squires - PercussionGiosuè Rosati - BassMaximilian 'Twig' Turnbull - Fender Rhodes, Clavinet, synthesizers, piano
Nature, Man and Woman
**In process of stocking** It’s been a few short months since Badge Époque Ensemble released their self titled debut, an ambiguous collection of woozy, narcotized funk. And yet already we have Nature, Man and Woman - a simmering new platter containing 3 songs, producing 26 minutes of dank flute-oriented atmosphere.The disco-sleeved 12" EP provides a revealing glimpse of a musically omnivorous approach. On Badge Theme we find the group upping the ante of the sound of their debut, unspooling 14 mi…