In the almost two decades since the Grammy-winning Atlanta hip-hop duo Outkast stopped making new music, André Benjamin (AKA André 3000, AKA the more outre of the two) has been on a real trip, moving further and further away from rap and towards middle age – and improvisational jazz. Along the way he lost his parents, gained an anxiety disorder diagnosis, and started popping up in the wilds of Los Angeles (and thence your feed) playing a Mesoamerican flute while waiting for his coffee in Starbucks or his flight at LAX. Custom-made instruments accumulated, ayahuasca was essayed, and a chance meeting with “spiritual improvisational / space collage music” guru Carlos Niño in the organic grocery chain Erewhon set the stage for one of 2023’s most intriguing releases: an album of instrumental, improvisational, experimental music titled New Blue Sun. It came with a warning label: “No bars”.
Imagine five steps to the left of that, and you’ll be in the ballpark for André 3000’s headlining spot at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Volume festival, in which Benjamin, Niño and friends jammed in the Tank, a converted oil reservoir beneath the gallery’s new building. Across 90 minutes four musicians (including Deantoni Parks and Surya Botofasina) built an ambient soundscape from synths and keys, drums, percussion and a variety of flutes and flute-like instruments, laced with samples of bird calls, occasional panting, and the odd wild animal noise. If it feels almost satirical, Benjamin appears to be in on the joke: in one of a handful of spoken interludes during the show, he talked earnestly for a minute or so in a made-up language, before switching to English: “I want to let everyone know, what I just said, from the bottom of my heart – I completely made all of that shit up. You should have seen your faces; y’all looked so serious!”
