Review & Full Album Stream: BBF, Outside the Noise
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on December 2nd, 2019 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream BBF’s Outside the Noise in full. Album is out Dec. 6 on Argonauta Records.]
First thing’s first: Italian outfit BBF‘s moniker, yes, is derived from the family names of the three players involved in the band. That’s guitarist/vocalist Claudio Banelli, bassist/synthesist/vocalist Pietro Brunetti and drummer/percussionist Carlo Forgiarini — B, B and F going by the initials. Easy enough, and suited to some of the more ’70s aspects of their sound on their second album and Argonauta Records debut, Outside the Noise, as some of the lead guitar shimmers on post-intro leadoff track “Third Eye” shimmers with a ’70s pastoralism à la Marshall Tucker Band checking your eyesight and solos are reserved for a reverb-laced seer that seems more drawn from the school of Eddie Hazel. “Time” bops like Ginger Baker-era Masters of Reality, “Kaleidoscope” drawls out cosmic and ethereal with a surprising patience, and the mid-album pairing of “Outside the Noise” and “Into the Light” consumes about 16 minutes of the 41-minute runtime but puts it to excellent use, running through multiple movements and moods in the title-track only to find its way in the second piece and celebrate with a highlight guitar and percussion interplay enhanced by some Rolling Stones-style blues harp.
Instrumentally, BBF show a ready adventurousness and their songs have a fluidity to them that makes the moments of drift all the more effective, but when they want to rock there’s plenty of room for that as well, as they show early in the record on “Third Eye” and “Time,” though ultimately their sonic reach proves more varied in its intention. That is to its credit and to the band’s, as they seem to have no trouble holding the proceedings together and letting their songs work in defiance of what one might generalize as some of the tropes of Italian heavy rock, eschewing influences like Fu Manchu and Nebula in favor of broader styles of songcraft, while still holding to an energy of performance that keeps the eight-track offering moving forward in interesting ways as it weaves between one expression and the next.
If, as the intro “Apollo” suggests in reading the transcription left behind by the first astronauts to touch down on the moon, BBF “came in peace for all mankind,” that’s not exactly a minor ambition. I can’t speak to the universality of its appeal — that is, what portion of “all mankind” is going to be able to get down — but their having come in peace is easy enough to grant. “Apollo” is just two minutes long before it gives over to “Third Eye,” but it plays an essential role in Outside the Noise just the same in that it adjusts the listener’s expectation at the outset for immediacy. As in, there isn’t one. And it’s smartly done, because as Outside the Noise is the band’s first offering for Argonauta, it’s an exposure to a new audience perhaps taking them on for the first time — I know I am, at least — so essentially “Apollo” works with deceptive efficiency in those two minutes to teach that new audience how to experience what’s coming on the seven cuts that follow. They’re not the first to do such a thing, and it may or may not have been a conscious decision on their part, but it’s smoothly done just the same.
And that smoothness also becomes a running theme throughout. “Third Eye” has perhaps the most prevalent hook on the record — figuratively as well as literally; the vocals are too high and dry in the chorus, which is something “Kaleidoscope” corrects later but that comes back again on the penultimate “Sun” — but even as BBF leave behind the straightforward path in favor of more open and exploratory vibes, they do so with an inviting spirit. The three movements across the 9:33 of “Outside the Noise” itself are clearly-enough marked in the track with drops to silence at 2:53 and 7:43 to draw the lines between sonic turns. The first part seems to bring in guest vocals for some soulful wailing over guitar that’s ably enough done but probably would seem all the more so with some lyrics being delivered, while the midsection taps Blind Melon wistful grunge, and the ending serves as a meditative intro to the spacier textures soon to take hold in “Into the Light” and which will continue to unfold on “Kaleidoscope,” “Sun” and the droney closer “Harvest Moon.”
The solo tone that was prefaced in “Third Eye” finds its realization in “Into the Light” and, yeah, if these guys wanted to whip out a “Maggot Brain” cover at any point, I’d be down to check it out. The guitar work is classy, not at all overwrought, and however they got it, that tone is something special and worth preserving. It stands out somewhat in contrast to the drift and post-rock of what surrounds, particularly with “Kaleidoscope” following, but that works to its benefit. It’s made to stand out, where “Kaleidoscope” is made to be hypnotic and sure enough is precisely that, running through a subtly quick 4:21 and giving way to “Sun” which enacts the final build of the record with a marked character and charged emotional progression palpable in the instruments as much as the vocals.
Its turns aren’t unexpected, but their immediate familiarity acts in their favor as it’s that much easier to follow them upward to the crescendo of Outside the Noise, leaving “Harvest Moon” as what might be a five-minute afterthought were it night such an experimentalist delight. Chimes, acoustic guitar, electric drone, quiet cymbal washes and rain sticks and in the end a consuming churn and wash of synth to cut to silence to show a band willing and ready to step outside of even the fairly wide comfort zone they’ve established over the course of the record to that point. That’s an impulse and a drive that serves them well in bidding goodbye to their second offering and holds promise for continued growth, but based on what they do here, one wouldn’t want to make any predictions on their direction for a third release, except perhaps to say that the progression underway in these tracks does not seem to be at an end point and that BBF do not seem like the kind of band to find their sound and hold still in it. There’s a restlessness here, as much as it’s coming in peace, but BBF channel that into an engaging and fascinating variety of craft on Outside the Noise, and though the record isn’t perfect, somehow it feels like if it was it would lose some of its natural spirit.
