Craig Benedict Valentine Badynee (CBVB, at times hereafter) got his first 4-track and microphone at fourteen after raising the funds from the sale of stolen car radios. Note: Although these illegal profits were split 50/50, CBVB was only the lookout. Before he could even play an instrument, he fell in love with capturing any sound he could muster, whether it was drum-like table thumping, snagging snippets off the TV or radio, or experimenting with the primitive SK-1 sampler, turning the buzz of a faulty cable into an 808-like bass line. Bringing all these disparate audio oddities together on the multitrack was where young CBVB really blew his mind.

As his teenage years flitted away, Badynee teamed up with a few like-minded types interested more in making some sort of beautiful noise rather than writing proper songs. Together, they formed Asha Vida, a group steeped in improvisation and sonic exploration, that was at the crux of Detroit's radiant 90s Space Rock scene along with fellow underground luminaries like Windy & Carl, Majesty Crush, and Füxa.

CBVB used to joke that by 1999, he was going to stop making weirdo music and start up a pop group called 1999, a nod to his beloved Prince. This sort of happened, but instead, it was 2002 and he called the band PAS/CAL. This band was, by design, the absolute opposite of Asha Vida's devil-may-care approach to music-making. The devil in every little detail was all that mattered in the elaborate arrangements Badynee and his pop architects constructed. Pitchfork described PAS/CAL via an absolutely whirligig of musical reference wizardry, asserting the band possessed an 'Electric Light Orchestra baroqueness' and 'Of Montreal schizophrenia'. The songs at times had a 'Byrdsian jangle', were 'darkly XTC-like' or tapped into 'His 'n' Hers-era Pulp', and managed to bridge 'Stereolab and the Zombies' with 'arrangements to rival Jellyfish or Jon Brion.' After numerous singles, EPs, and an oft-delayed full-length that damn-neared Chinese Democracy territory, the band called it quits as Craig moved to Chicago to bolster his 401k and raise a family.

Fast forward past jobs won & lost, births, deaths, graduations, first-love heartbreaks, braces on & off, bullies & besties, renting, owning, foreclosure, and owning again. During all this life stuff, CBVB quietly kept at it like the Wallace Stevens of rock 'n roll, fitting songwriting in when he could during lunch breaks, before his wife woke up and after the kids were tucked in for the night. The songs accumulated slowly, the way interesting things tend to, not rushed toward a deadline but seasoned by actual living. He also found an unexpected collaborator closer to home: his daughter Viv, a budding songwriter known to those in the know as "intellectual bimbo." Together they produced a quirky off-kilter EP of alt-R&B electro-pop, released in December of 2023, a detour that turned out to be less a distraction than a warm-up.

As a solo artist, Badynee has been drawn back to the music that first pricked his wee lil' ears: the often overlooked late-'70s solo records by artists who had outgrown their famous contexts, figures like Alan Hull, Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker, Donovan, Billy Lyall, John Cale, Lou Reed, Caetano Veloso, Serge Gainsbourg, Joni Mitchell, McCartney, Lennon, Dylan, Young. He also developed a quiet obsession with jazz vocalists who write their own material rather than traffic in tired standards, Michael Franks, Steve Kuhn, Carla Bley, artists for whom sophistication and feeling aren't in competition. It's a lineage that values the intimate over the bombastic, the well-turned phrase over the grand gesture, and the kind of emotional honesty that only comes from having actually lived something first.

That sensibility found its fullest expression to date in his solo work, where Badynee plays nearly all the instruments himself (save for a few guest spots on sax and backing vocals) and handles recording and production throughout, a fact that becomes less surprising once you remember the kid who once turned a faulty cable hum into a bass line. His single "I Walked Away From the Firing Squad," mastered by Warren Defever of His Name is Alive, drew comparisons to Leonard Cohen, Harry Nilsson, Nick Cave, Father John Misty, and early Divine Comedy, which is to say, critics recognized the lineage without quite being able to pin it down, which is exactly where Badynee tends to live.

His songs move between the cinematic and the conversational, sometimes within the same verse, and range from pugilistic social impressionism to world-weary hopefulness to tender, funky dispatches from the middle of an actual life. The resulting EP is a masterclass in varied storytelling, with tracks exploring everything from the tragic history of the world's first human cannonball to the intellectual blackmail of a cocktail party and the dramatic fallout of teenage heartbreak. They are, in other words, about the things that actually happen to a person, which, it turns out, is more than enough.

His most recent release is Don't Leave Your House to an Amateur (Team Love Records, March 20, 2026).