Alexander William Sowinski (born October 11, 1991) is a Canadian musician, producer, and drummer for instrumental group BADBADNOTGOOD. With the band, he has released five studio albums and is noted for his jazz drumming musicianship.
Sowinski studied jazz performance at Humber College, where he met his future BBNG bandmates Chester Hansen and Matthew Tavares in class. Before forming BBNG, Sowinski played in a band with musician Tommy Paxton-Beesley, who performs as River Tiber.[7] BADBADNOTGOOD formed in 2010 and had viral success the following year after posting jazz covers of Odd Future online. They released their debut record in Fall 2011. Sowinski both drums and acts as the band's MC from behind his drum kit. Following the rising popularity of BBNG in 2011 and 2012, Sowinski eventually withdrew from Humber.
As of 2021, Sowinski has released six full-length albums with BBNG, including a collaborative record with Ghostface Killah, and has been short-listed for the Polaris Music Prize twice. Also with the group, Sowinski has produced numerous hip hop, R&B, and electronic music singles, including tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Daniel Caeser, and Kali Uchis. Sowinski has also worked as a session musician and songwriter for the past decade, working with producers and musicians like Kaytranada, Frank Dukes, Jerry Paper, and Charlotte Day Wilson, among others.
In 2018, he helped form the Toronto-based design collective Arrangement Studio.[8] With its launch in the Fall of 2018, Sowinski released a volume of experimental ambient music under the name Arrangement, titled Vol. 1., and has released a series of singles since. As part of a related collective, Group Climate, Sowinski also produced a volume of drum breaks for sample usage in late 2020. Sowinski began DJing in 2019 and has since curated a series of experimental DJ mixes under the Arrangement Studio name and co-presented on Worldwide FM.[9][10]
Sowinski plays a Ludwig Maple four-piece drumkit, generally with a 14" tom, 18" floor tom and a 26" kick, and utilizes a Roland SPDS sampler.[12][13][14] In the early-2010s, he would often play without a rack tom and have his SPDS mounted on top of the kick drum.[15] He has utilized both Istanbul and vintage Zildjian cymbals, and plays with Headhunter drumsticks.[16][14]
^"Review – BadBadNotGood Were Given a Run for Their Money by Other Black's Funk". 303 Magazine. 2017-10-13. Retrieved 2020-06-30. It was drummer Alexander Sowinski's birthday and the obligatory audience-wide singing of Happy Birthday was joined by a half-dozen playful riffs of the song peppered throughout the remainder of the set...
^ abSpencer, Jason (2014-08-08). "BadBadNotGood: The shape of hip-hop to come hits LAC". Mississauga.com. Retrieved 2020-06-28. The Toronto-based trio, made up of Alex Sowinski, Matt Tavares – both originally from Mississauga – and Ottawa's Chester Hansen... said Sowinski, who attended Lorne Park Secondary School before moving to Toronto to finish high school
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