Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK
24-05-2012

A big band of bright young things from Britain and a slightly older but still hugely hip quartet from the States provided a very strong double-bill and succeeded in attracting an audience of just the right sort of people, though it was a disappointment there were not more of them.

Where were the Birmingham and beyond jazz fans I see at so many gigs? Can’t they find their way down the A45? They certainly missed out on a gig to remember. Still, on the bright side, there were fewer old white men like me to spoil the demographic mix.

So, to the main act first.

Robert Glasper on acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes and synth, Casey Benjamin on vocoder and saxophones, Derrick Hodge on electric bass and Mark Colenburg on drums began by pulling down a jazz shrine, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. What they built in its place was a multi-headed monster of fearsome intensity and extraordinary instrumental prowess.

Having introduced the chant on vocoder, Benjamin later switched to alto saxophone which he plays through a harmoniser, giving the impression of a whole bunch of saxophones soloing as one. Such was the storm he constructed, that after a while Glasper and Hodge retired from the field of battle, leaving Colenburg to face the onslaught alone. To say that he gave as good as he got would be an understatement, and any punters who had entered the theatre disappointed that Chris Dave would not be on drums had their qualms well and truly quietened.

In fact, had Mark Colenburg’s left wrist, a drum stick and a high hat been the only part of the band to show up for the gig, we would still have had our money’s worth. My companion, a drummer himself, declared he would have been hard-pressed to even attain that speed for 30 seconds, never mind keeping it going for most of a two-hour set, while performing all kinds of equal but different wizardry with the left hand and both feet.

The Experiment’s take on Sade’s Cherish The Day and Herbie Hancock’s Butterfly followed and a whole other bunch of stuff that I stopped noting down, too busy were my hands beating the arm rests while the feet did the seated dance. This is a band of immense power, locking in to irresistible beats, and, in the person of Glasper, capable of music of breathtaking beauty, as his solo section revealed so eloquently.

Things came to a fine climax, as we could have predicted they would, with the band’s novel take on Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. The encore was fun though more ensemble playing and a shorter soprano saxophone solo would have been a better road to go down. In fact, the long solo was something of a feature of the set, and while each one contained some moments of brilliance, a few overran into sheer indulgence.

With no pre-conceived ideas or prior knowledge of the music this might have been a relatively blemish-free gig, those solo excesses aside. However, since the band is touring on the back of their recent Black Radio album, there are some observations to make.

A considerable part of the charm of that album is the setting against the band’s sound of some of modern R’n'B’s, soul’s – call it what you will – most affecting voices. We’re talking Erykah Badu, Lalah Hathaway, Bilal. To replace them all with Casey Benjamin is to change things considerably, and to take away that contrast between the voice as nature intended it and the instruments passing through gates and flanges and all kinds of other knob-twidder delights.

I admire the man for his strength of purpose, but Benjamin makes no sound that is not highly processed, whether it is those harmonised saxophones or his vocoded voice (he uses the wonderfully retro-trendy keytar to give him any range he wants). Now, interestingly, and this is true of most vocoded voices, while you would think that passing the voice through electronic processes would widen that voice’s sonic possibilities, in reality all vocoded voices start to sound nearly exactly the same. And it ends up being a restrictive sound, not a freeing one. Of course it also ensures that certain subversity of making the lyrics nearly unintelligible.

So, let’s just say these ears were vocoded out fairly early on, and that there was an awful lot of it still to go… A guest singer for even a few songs, would have been a good move.

In the first half we were introduced to the boys from Manchester jazz school who have grown into men of great talent and ingenuity, and with considerable compositional and arranging skills.

Ben Cottrell conducts and does some live sound processing, while the band comprises a mathematically pleasing three trumpets, three trombones, three saxophones, with electric guitar, piano, double bass and drums.

They opened the gig as they open their album, Big Ideas, with Bake, which was tight and precise, while full of energy and good humour. The beats of this band can be every bit as modern as the Experiments, while the horn writing builds on the past and brings some really fresh ideas to the harmony and melody.

Sisterhood was something of a highlight for me, but I feel slightly uncomfortable mentioning it as it was the only non-Cotrrell composition. Oh well, full marks to writer and saxophonist Ben Watte.

Altoist Sam Healey is a soloist who can be relied upon to raise the temperature, while Nick Walters turned in a lovely trumpet solo despite having rushed in late, having spent the first number stuck in traffic, and pianist Patrick Hurley made an impression too.

For Broken, full of rich horn harmonies and building to a grand climax, singer Najia Bagi appeared a little tentative initially, and had to tackle a verse slightly low for the best parts of her voice, but she certainly made up for it in the end, conjuring up an almost Patti Smith-like intensity. Like the band, a singer who is original and brings a fresh twist to the format.

A group of this size is an awfully difficult thing to sustain, so I hope and pray that Mr Cottrell will persevere. They are damn fine now but imagine how awesome they might in five years’ time! I haven’t felt this excited about a British big band since Loose Tubes, and regular readers of this blog will know that is praise indeed!