Cookup

If you’re coming to *COOKUP* for faithful renditions of its ’90s and early-2000s R&B source material, don’t. But if you want to hear a few talented musicians deconstruct that material to a point almost beyond recognition, it’s hard to think of another album that’ll do it. Like a lot of the LA-based multi-instrumentalist’s music (check out *Superstore* or the warped standards of *Satin Doll*), the performances here don’t try to communicate songs so much as circumscribe them through negative space, whether it’s the reading of a personal ad over “Are You That Somebody” or a version of “Crazy in Love” that sounds half-remembered in real time. Sketchy, fragmented, a little evasive. But the looseness is a mood, and anyone familiar with Gendel knows that mood is where he finds his music.

The ambient-jazz saxophonist offers unpredictable, impressionistic takes on R&B hits from the ’90s and early ’00s, tackling songs by Beyoncé, Aaliyah, and Erykah Badu.

A maverick saxophonist and sonic experimentalist, Sam Gendel applies his distinctive approach to contemporary R&B hits on his inventive 2023 covers album, COOKUP.