Badbadnotgood’s Alex Sowinski on Scoring ‘Paris De Noche’, A Film By Sagan Lockhart Starring Jahmir Brown, Carl Aikens, and more

Paris De Noche, a new film by Sagan Lockhart starring Jahmir Brown and Carl Aikens and filmed by Naquan Rollings, is a well constructed combination of skateboarding, music, tone, and defined visual identity. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should stop reading this and watch it immediately. 

The skate video is soundtracked by badbadnotgood’s Alex Sowinski, under the banner of his new musical project, Group Climate. It’s a strange, sort of vintage method of skate video production to have an original score. It is something that feels more like the 80s’ days of Tony Hawk’s floppy teenaged hair and the Bones Brigade flying down Wallows than a current affair. Paris De Noche, though, harkens back to something even more vintage, sounding like beats made in the 90’s by people whose record collections hold a special place on their largest shelves for jazz and bossa of the 60s. The soundtrack is an album of itself, pulling from years of demos and thought processes, and available now on all streaming platforms as well as on limited vinyl pressing.

The skating and filming is great, but that’s sort of a given considering the talent involved. What interested us particularly was the music and the methodology behind it, so that’s precisely what we asked Alex about.

How do you know Sagan? Do you skate?

I don’t skate in any type of fashion other than pure hobby fun, I’m totally shit at it, but I love doing it. I grew up doing it, it was kind of my communal neighborhood activity where I grew up.

Where are you from?

The suburbs of Toronto. I just grew up watching skate videos and loving it, it was my hobby outside of playing music. I met Sagan in I think 2015? At a Ghostface show we were doing in London. I knew his stuff from everything he did with Odd Future during that big boom in the early 2010’s, and we were all inspired by that. I’d see him at shows and different things, he’s just a wonderful dude. He presented this project and was asking if badbad could do it, but badbad is kind of busy. Myself and my bandmate are both dads so getting things together as a band is a whole different thing, so I told Sagan that I’ve got this other music I’ve been making. We were talking about it for a long time, I’d send him stuff and he’d pick and choose things.

What was his pitch like? It’s sort of a strange thing to score a skate video like you’re scoring a narrative film.

I had a bunch of demos and he’d pick out what he thought was likely to work, and when we had an edit and were able to place things in. When I knew the look and feel of the film, I was able to go into the studio and fill out the baselines and whatever it needed. It was truly a great excuse to finish this music and start this little side project of mine. I think that having a purpose for the music made it a lot easier. Instead of being like, ‘I made a bunch of music!’, there was a purpose.

Can you talk a bit about that? Is Group Climate a new thing that you’re going to pursue beyond this skate video?

Yeah, for sure! I think where myself and my bandmates are at, we are looking to have a secondary voice of being able to make things and not feel like it has to be a badbadnotgood thing, if it feels a bit outside. Writing cord progressions and melodies are my secondary thing, playing drums are my first, so releasing music is a great way to track your progress year over year.

Do you have any favorite film scores or things that you listened to that influenced this selection of music?

Definitely! I like a lot of older film soundtracks. 60s and 70s stuff that has great live musicianship. Morricone, Piero Luvinati(?), or even the modern stuff, I grew up watching Star Wars and shit. But even having grown up watching skate films, I found a lot of music through it. Especially, Yeah, Right! showed me that Fatlip song. I didn’t make all of the music entirely for the film, but once I knew that it was going there, I tweaked it in. That’s sort of how skate videos work anyway. You have the part and you find the song.

It feels like a very strange thing to score a skate video. It’s cool that you’re into older forms of music because original scores for skate videos are sort of an older, more classic time.

Yeah, totally. With Sagan’s project, he wanted to do something really original from this whole kind of group of friends. You’re not just like, licensing songs, or making it feel like it’s in the same canon as everything else. It feels more like a real film, a real part.

So you don’t skate much anymore?

I actually was a lot during the pandemic. There’s a skatepark near my house that is always empty so I’d go and suck in there, practice. Especially riding transition, I never got a chance to do that as a kid, I always just street skated. But I’m also a dad with a two and a half year old so I haven’t had a lot of time.

Do you have secret video parts out that we don’t know about?

Oh, absolutely not. No. That’d be so embarrassing. No, I legitimately suck at skateboarding, I just love doing it. I had a little rail growing up. But also, the way I’m approaching it, I’m a thirty two year old dad, I’m trying to keep it chill.

Who was your favorite skater growing up?

I mean, in like Tony Hawk days, it was Rune Glifberg or Kareem Campbell., I always thought those guys were sick. Then when I started getting older, there was this dude who skated for Blind called Jake Duncombe who had sick style. There was this other guy who skated to Jimi Hendricks…

It’s sick that you might not remember the skater specifically, but you remember the song they skated to.

Yeah, that’s kind of how I know or can remember.

What do you think if anything, has been an influence outside of skateboarding and music on this project?

I think that Sagan and I just wanted to experience this communal simplicity, where it was easy to put together. In the past, you can sign up for a project and this person needs this and that, but with this project there was no BS. It was nice and easy and chill, so not of anything particular, but it was nice to do a project that was just fun and low stakes. That attitude was important.