In videos, he pretty much never takes off his tiny pink sunglasses. He introduced one recent riff with a monologue about former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, Russian egrets, McDonald’s, and the metaverse.
Though the music isn’t always designed to make you laugh, the visuals and the framing generally have some element of surreal comedy. He also writes and records original songs in a variety of styles, playing all the instruments himself. And now there’s this realization: It’s kind of a silly thing, to want to hit strings, or smack something, and for that to be the thing that you’re best at, for your whole life, you know? And that’s what makes it so beautiful.” “For the longest time, if someone was brilliant at what they did, there was this reverence that was unnecessary. “When it comes to this virtuosic playing, there’s this sense of absurdity at the state of life as a human in 2022,” he says. But they aren’t too reverent to play the former at the breakneck tempo of a drum’n’bass track, or to rename the latter “ Giant Nuts.” Before releasing NOT TiGHT, they referred to its eponymous track by the working title “ Pussy With Balls.”įor Spilly Cave, the 25-year-old creator of the “Cbat” reharmonization TikTok, there is something inherently funny about extreme musical aptitude, which perhaps went unacknowledged in earlier generations’ adulation of drum gods and guitar heroes. Their respect for John Coltrane is apparent in their electrified readings of “My Favorite Things,” the most reliable standard in his repertoire, and “Giant Steps,” his signature original composition. One contributing factor may be the way they pair their knowledge of jazz theory and technique with a pronounced absurdist streak. “We just write what we enjoy listening to and playing.” What is it about them that connects with listeners from outside the insular jazz realm? “We don’t really know how or why,” DOMi says. NOT TiGHT contains a handful of concessions to how pop music is supposed to sound, but on YouTube, where the pair first found their audience, their output consists chiefly of elaborate instrumental excursions. Remarkably, DOMi and Beck have achieved their cool-kid appeal not by downplaying the nerdiest aspects of their musical personalities, but by foregrounding them. “It’s really cool to be chased by a 70-year-old couple in the middle of Italy, and equally as cool to have an 8-year-old kid come with his parents to our Blue Note show in New York.” “It’s not something we planned on doing, but we’re glad younger people are enjoying our music,” Beck says over email. On the one hand: Herbie Hancock and Kurt Rosenwinkel. The list of features on NOT TiGHT is a testament to the line DOMi and Beck have straddled thus far. What is genuinely new is the notion that music like this might appeal to a broad and youthful audience, beyond the jazz diehards-that players like Beck and DOMi might share the stage with a pop star like Ariana Grande, or that their music might sit comfortably on a popular Spotify playlist alongside stylish alt-pop auteurs like Steve Lacy and Sudan Archives. And those who have been through the music-school wringer themselves will recognize Rockwood as the ideal locale for the tragicomic scene he has set. Those with an interest in jazz may nod approvingly at what Cave has done with the harmonies. Viewers who spend too much time online will know “Cbat” for its role in a viral Reddit post about a hapless boyfriend’s poor choices in baby-making music. “This is if that guy on Reddit was a jazz comp major and brought his girlfriend to his empty show at Rockwood Music Hall,” Cave deadpans, then launches into a guitar-centric rendition of Hudson Mohawke’s trap-EDM instrumental “Cbat,” which Cave has reharmonized, like a good jazz comp major, with a handful of slick extended chords. It’s also the imagined setting of a funny video by Spilly Cave, a 25-year-old songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and music school dropout who has nearly 40,000 followers on TikTok. It’s the sort of place a young, striving musician might book for their first gig in the city, fresh out of Berklee College of Music and ready to take over the world. There’s a smallish club called Rockwood Music Hall on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, around the corner from the legendary Katz’s Delicatessen.
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