Release
Robert Glasper - Double Booked
Robert Glasper’s Double Booked (Blue Note) is a bit of a two-parter, separated in to ‘trio’ and ‘experiment’ sections, with the first half being a more traditional outing and part two taking in all sorts of electronic trickery, horn sections, effects wizardry and the vocals of guests Bilal and Mos Def. What is perhaps the albums’ highest high is the vocal version of Herbie Hancock’s Butterfly, which puts a vocoder vocal to really good use! Perhaps it’s a comment on the use of auto-tune in contemporary music, particularly as the original is most popular as an instrumental. This is really one of those Jazz albums you need to discover if you’re a fan of The Roots or any live Hip Hop act, for that matter. Sure, it pushes the envelope whenever it’s given an opportunity; a fact of Jazz which is what probably annoys most people about the genre, however, the most wild experimentation yields the best results. Glasper giving us what feels like two servings of his brand of Jazz is almost like seeing both sides of the coin, an example of which would be including his version of Thelonius Monk’s Think Of One, most famously sampled by J Dilla for De La Soul’s Stakes Is High. Brilliant.
