Jazz can seem perennially stuck in a bygone era, never quite able to get over its icons or entice a new generation.
But if anyone has yanked the artform into the modern era it is Texan Robert Glasper, whose cosmic adventures straddle R’n’B, soul, hip-hop and experimental jazz, and have won him a Grammy.
Performing to a young and excitable Concorde 2, the Robert Glasper Experiment quartet shook up the typical mould by mostly favouring vocoder and keytar over brass.
The heavy electronic slant might have alienated purists but was leftfield and peculiar enough to keep the Experiment a groundbreaking proposition in the best traditions of improvisational jazz.
Stylistically it shared a strong lineage with the neo-soul of The Roots, Common and Jill Scott et al, Glasper’s clean chords at once deliberate yet riddled with ambiguity, the beats stoned and casual.
Favourites like Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Radiohead’s Everything In Its Right Place were warped nearly beyond recognition.
Beats morphed and rippled like wobbling flesh and gave way to breakneck, skittering drum patterns, while a bass solo was so exceptional it drew laughs of astonishment.
Sometime Basement Jaxx singer Vula Malinga made a stunning virtuoso appearance, offering a welcome contrast to Casey Benjamin’s central but divisive vocoder.
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