{"id":34427,"date":"2015-07-13T10:23:19","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T15:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/?p=34427"},"modified":"2015-11-30T17:33:21","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T23:33:21","slug":"robert-glasper-covered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/2015\/07\/13\/robert-glasper-covered\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Glasper: Covered"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"glaspercovered\"<\/a>Smooth. R&B Grammy winner Robert Glasper returns to his jazz roots with this piano, bass, drums trio album.\u00a0Following his award winning R&B album\u00a0Black Radio 2<\/span>, Glasper commented on track 1,\u00a0“I didn’t want to do straight jazz – BOOM – out of nowhere.”\u00a0Covered<\/span>, appropriately named because these songs are covers of music Glasper enjoys and re-imaginings of some of his own work, draws a happy medium between jazz and R&B. Easy listening jazz with familiar melodies and sprinklings of dissonance keep the listener drawn in.<\/p>\n

Early in the record we hear a\u00a0jazz translation\u00a0of Radiohead’s\u00a0Reckoner<\/em>. The cover is immediately recognizable to any Thom Yorke fan. It stays true to the original song’s melancholy tone. Glasper’s jazz interpretation gradually ripples forth and really grabs the track at the end.<\/p>\n

The 13 minute long\u00a0In Case You Forgot<\/em>, track 5,\u00a0is easily the most experimental of the album. Functionally, the track highlights each of the three musicians on the album. It begins with Glasper playing what sounds like a musical tightrope on keyboard. The recognizable cover-portion of this track begins around 4:13, but constantly interrupts itself with manic jazz keyboard riffs. Competition between the calm R&B melody and\u00a0the imposing, fast paced solo riffs implies Glasper’s desire (and ability) to do something unexpected and original, but a recognition that\u00a0he must break out of the barriers of his R&B success to do so.<\/p>\n

On track 6,\u00a0So Beautiful<\/em>, the musical line lets loose into interpretive keyboards that vary from the original track’s calm, rocking comfort. This piece will make you\u00a0feel yourself.\u00a0Listening to\u00a0Covered<\/span>, I find myself waiting on the tracks to see when they diverge from recognizable acoustic covers to something more personalized…. This track nailed it. Another favorite from the album was\u00a0Levels<\/em>, originally\u00a0by Bilal Oliver whose music video was directed by Flying Lotus…and Flying Lotus made a particularly wonderful remix of that track. Glasper took this already melancholy piece and added a WHOLE new layer of depth and emotion to it. Soft and touching with a firm, pushing melody- Glasper’s feel for an organic musical line truly transforms\u00a0Levels<\/em>\u00a0something new and impacting all of its own.<\/p>\n

The final track of the album,\u00a0I’m Dying of Thirst<\/em>, voices the album’s dedication to victims\u00a0and families wrongfully killed by the police. The children voicing names of victims in the midst of a pressing keyboard line will tug at your heart. Its ever present, somber melody seems all too symbolic of the oppressing environment in which so many live and suffer here in the USA.<\/p>\n

In all,\u00a0Covered<\/span> was delightful, touching, and absolutely worth\u00a0listening to thoroughly. I hope to hear it ALL THE TIME on Jazz in the Morning here at KJHK.<\/p>\n

RIYL: Robert Glasper Experiment,\u00a0 Erykah Badu,\u00a0Robert Glasper Trio<\/strong><\/p>\n

DNP: none<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Ashley Hershey<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Easy listening jazz with familiar melodies and sprinklings of dissonance on Covered keep the listener drawn in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1635,"featured_media":34428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,4,3235,3230],"tags":[3148,2368,641,3055,3149],"class_list":["post-34427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz-rotation","category-music","category-music-reviews","category-new-music-rotation","tag-covered","tag-flying-lotus","tag-jazz","tag-rb","tag-robert-glasper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/glaspercovered.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1635"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}