For a man who plays an instrument that, its detractors say, makes everybody sound the same, Casey Benjamin does a fair job of asserting his own personality in the Robert Glasper Experiment.
Benjamin is the group's vocal/focal point, processing song lyrics centre-stage through a vocoder hooked up to a keytar, the electronic keyboard slung over his shoulder guitar-style. He also plays soprano and alto saxophones through a harmoniser, so you might say his every move is electronically enabled. The man's far from robotic, however, and the exuberance of his improvising, both on saxophone and in "keying" song melodies off the original script, is a palpable force in a group that restates the jazz ethos of reinventing familiar material with thrilling results.
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