André Benjamin, aka 3000, has already shown great vision in hip-hop. With Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, he was prodigious in integrating elements of jazz and electronics into his rap, G funk or neo soul. The reunion of the famous group Outkast, pride of Atlanta as Janelle Monáe is, was grandiose at Osheaga in 2014. Marked by this concert and Outkast’s concrete reputation, we listened to his New Blue Sun solo album at the end of 2023.
We were initially sceptical about the choice of electronic flutes as the solo instrument for an art form at the crossroads of electroacoustic and new-age. In the end, we were charmed by these soaring environments, conducive to relaxation, meditation or even the gateway to a restful sleep.
The overwhelmingly positive reviews certainly motivated André 3000 fans to get their hands on a ticket for the concert version of this album. On a Sunday night at the Wilfrid-Pelletier Hall, the superstar took to the stage with 4 unknown musicians, two of whom he met in a grocery store not long ago: keyboards, percussion, guitar and electronics.
It’s a free improvisation between contemporary musicians. Vague soul and jazz harmonies creep in here and there in a simmering pot. The textures emanating from digital lutherie are familiar. The guitar’s pedal effects are familiar. The vocabulary of percussion is familiar. The amalgam of all this is known… by very few local music lovers, who only show up in a tiny minority at the exploratory programs of the MUTEK and Akousma festivals. Fortunately, inspired images and laser lines added to this “experience”, to use a polite term.
These collective improvisations are relatively interesting, but unfortunately diminished by the playing of their main creator. André 3000 tells us that he took up electronic flutes in the same way he took up rap in the 90s and 2000s. The problem is that this self-taught musician has only acquired textural skills with these melodic instruments, whose sounds are reminiscent of the recorder, bagpipe or gazou. The problem is that André 3000 has no mastery of melodic articulation, and his little beginner’s phrases soon become a serious irritant in collective improvisation, rather than a transcendent melodic-textural discourse.
At the end of this too-long and too insubstantial improvisation, the level of intensity was raised, the 5 musicians were more violent, more intense, and André 3000 was still as limited as ever with his instrument, which he should learn to play before performing in front of an audience. A lazy, pointless concert, inferior to the album New Blue Sun… and bordering on a sham.
