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Stream your favorite songs and discover new music on TIDAL with the largest streaming catalog available, completely ad-free. TIDAL members can download. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Double Booked - Robert Glasper on AllMusic - 2009 - There is a certain hipness in title of.
Reverend Joe Ratliff - Spoken Words (Track 11) Angelika Beener - Project Coordinator Carla Leighton - Art Director, Designer Eli Wolf - Artists & Repertoire, Audio Producer, Producer Gordon H. Jee - Creative Director Jessica Chornesky - Photographer Joe Marciano - Engineer, Mixing Jos L. Knaepen - Photographer Keith Karwelies - Artists & Repertoire Max Ross - Assistant Engineer, Audio Engineer Michael Marciano - Mastering Robert Glasper - Audio Producer, Producer Shanieka D. Brooks - Product Manager.
Pianist Robert Glasper's embrace of hip hop—which is being foregrounded by Blue Note, presumably as a device to widen his trio's appeal—is, truth be told, overstated going on misleading. For at its core, Glasper's music is everything that hip hop is not, or anyway not what it is perceived to be. In My Element—a wonderfully rounded development of the music presented by the same inventive trio on Canvas (Blue Note, 2005)—is subtle, allusive, rhythmically complex, and understated. And it's all acoustic; there are no samples, pre-programmed beats or spinning wheels of steel. Glasper's embrace of hip hop is real enough, but it is impressionistic rather than literal. In his own piano playing—a sophisticated, contemporary expression of Bill Evans' legacy—there is nary a trace.
The connection lies, most obviously, in the contribution of drummer Damon Reid. But it is indirect even here, not in the beats Reid plays so much as in the textures he produces, tough going on metallic and clearly out of rap and hip hop. Only occasionally—as on 'F.T.B.' And 'J Dillalude'—does Reid get down on the one and work it. Mostly he plays extended, skittering, running and jumping phrases, employing hip hop's signature rolls and paradiddles, but across and around the beat, abstracting the rhythm rather than simply maintaining it. Glasper's tunes—all but two tracks here are originals—are impressionistic and fragmentary too. They don't so much lay down melodies as suggest them.
![Glasper Glasper](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125654681/717523031.jpg)
Even the covers, of Sam Rivers' 'Beatrice' and Herbie Hancock's 'Maiden Voyage' (which morphs into Radiohead's 'Everything In Its Right Place'), are essences-of rather than note-faithful expositions. The originals are also, it has to be said, a bit samey, and the interest lies in the trio's elaborations of them rather than in their intrinsic value. 'One For 'Grew,' written for pianist Mulgrew Miller, is an exception, a beautiful, well-chiseled melody, and the closest thing to straight-ahead, swinging jazz on the album.
There is a certain hipness in title of that reflects the hipness of the music itself. It hints at two voicemail messages by and?uestlove, respectively, that ask about apparently being double booked on the same night with two different bands at different clubs. The irony in that paradox is that performs with his acoustic trio on the first half of the record, and with his Experiment on the second half. ’s trio is a crack unit with on drums and bassist Vincente Archer.
They understand where he’s at rhythmically and know how to knot things up and swing simultaneously. The expansive harmonics inherent in the album’s first two tracks - the skittering flow on “No Worries” that takes its post-bop seriously with some amazing improvisation, and the more open, airy lyricism on “Yes I’m Country (And That’s OK)' - are kind of opposite ends of the coin, but they're underscored and punctuated by an innovative reading of s “Think of One” to close the trio part of the record.
The Experiment's half begins as raps over 's Rhodes piano and ’s hip-hop drums. It expands from here with ’s funky electric bass, and saxophonist’s 's use of a vocoder over 's breakbeats. The centerpiece is the ten-minute “Festival,” an ultra-modern, funky jazz tune with some complex improvisational navigation.
Plays acoustic piano and Rhodes going head to head with that low-tuned funky bass and ’s outward-bound sax and spacy vocoder. Joins the band on the last two cuts.
He is as comfortable singing jazz and soul as he is hip-hop; he’s a kindred spirit for. “All Matter” walks on the hip-hop side of jazz, and 's “Open Mind,” which makes use of ’s turntablism, is a midtempo ballad drenched in experimental jazz and nu-soul as practices frantic breaks inside the shimmering melodic structure. Another notable thing about is that it was recorded completely live in the studio.
This is modern jazz that extends into popular music - without compromise.