London jazz wizard Shabaka Hutchings: Sons of Kemet / The Comet Is Coming / Shabaka & the Ancestors

it's finally here! 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥

this is an amazing ear enema following listening to st vincent. going to be playing it a lot this year.

lol first time I've seen enema deployed as a positive metaphor

hahaha this is more like an ear candle anyway, fire emojis otm

I've had to put on some quite dry and tediously enthralling neo-classical chamber jazz improv to calm myself down after all the excitement of blasting this one out earlier. Probably more like an ear enema!

lol we're 2/3 of the way to a terrible thread idea here

kinda shocked about how well d double e does on his feature here lol

God wtf why is this not on Bandcamp, why do these artists insist on doing this to people.

I think it's an Impulse thing, they aren't on bandcamp at all. Some of the older Hutchings stuff on different labels is though.

Btw, I agree! Disappointed to see this wasn't on there either, just clarifying that I think it's a label decision, not the artist in this case.

the digital album is available directly from impulse

Yeah, and I've bought it only to be sent a link to just the album art.

If labels are going to pull this shit, they need to do it right.

Ngl, I've already opened a complaint with Paypal over it. It would be like me paying full price for a record that comes out today, only to be handed the sleeve with no vinyl inside.

UMG can kiss my ass.

yeah that's fucked up

I saw that there is an article in the new Mojo on this scene but haven't seen the new edition yet to see what that article contains.

Shabaka is guesting on today's BBC 6Music Jamz Supernova show (1300-1400 UK time) - which is as good an excuse as any to bang on again about my current favourite show on the radio.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000w4jz

Sons of Kemet Jazz saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings talks through the influences behind his new album Black To The Future, This album begins and ends with powerful lyrical and musical statements of rage and frustration, expressed outwardly in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the subsequent BLM protests and features guest vocalists including, Chicago bandleader/vocalist Angel Bat Dawid, American poet Moor Mother, legendary British Grime MC D Double E and British artist/rapper/spoken word musical artist Kojey Radical.

"Let the Circle Be Unbroken" is really something and then ""Envision Yourself Levitating" gently and mournfully blowing in afterwards. I'm impressed how distinct this album is from YQIAR while clearly the same collective

The new Sons of Kemet is on Bandcamp, ftr.

thank you!

gahh it was pulled from Bandcamp while it was still in my cart, wtf Impulse

The new video from the Sons of Kemet album is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw_YbYpOPzo

There was a whole ass Soccer96 LP this year that I totally missed?

https://soccer96.bandcamp.com/album/dopamine

Update: it's really good, and much more cosmic than the post-punk EP with Alabaster dePlume (which I loved as well).

bro this honks

bro this honks

― maf you one two (maffew12), Thursday, December 23, 2021 1:02 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

gahh it was pulled from Bandcamp while it was still in my cart, wtf Impulse

― sleeve
Yo Sleeve, hope you've got it now!
It's been back on bandcamp for a while, getting to be my Number 1:
https://sonsofkemetmusic.bandcamp.com/album/black-to-the-future

thx, I did get it eventually, I like it but it is def in like my #15-20 range

Interesting! What would you say are its limitations? Not gonna argue with you, just wondering about a different way of hearing it.

off the top of my head, I thought it was trying to do too many things at once. I like the vocals and the spoken word stuff but found that it made the record lose focus compared to Your Queen Is A Reptile which I did really love

I agree, it's a very good album but feels less focused than Queen. And some of the poetry is too ranty for repeated listening.

Preview for the new Binker (Golding) & Moses (Boyd) is unreasonably great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPZxrsS2Hp0

(And if big booming snares remind you of anyone, yep, it’s produced by Hugh Padgham)

Saw Sons of Kemet for 2nd time last night in DC. Enjoyed 'em again. The energy, propulsive rhythms , etc. Hutchings briefly played flute on one song. Might be kinda nice if they varied their set a bit more like that.

jellie

I missed their Big Ears set (becz I've seen them before and they were scheduled against Patti Smith), but my son loved it. And he and I both got to see Shabaka play Aaron Copland's clarinet concerto with the Knoxville symphony, which was awesome. He should play clarinet more too!

really want to catch them in SF in a few weeks but can only attend one of the two shows they are doing,which is unfortunately sold out right now and people are trying to get mad money for tickets secondhand, even though the second night has plenty of tickets available.

Sorry. DC show had a "low number of tickets available" message on club website on the day of show, but tickets were still available . Saw The Comet is Coming once here here as well. All shows in fairly small rooms.

Hutchings really looked like he was enjoying himself onstage last night. Occasional smiles after wiping off sweat under the hot stage lights in the basement level club.

Missed them last night in Philly because I had a wild weekend and I already have tickets to the Divide & Dissolve/Low show this evening...had a friend who went who said that the weather seemed to really keep people away

Shabaka's new solo ep Afrikan Culture is meditative swirling flute & harps & bells & other sounds. I really like it as an unexpected departure, though if you're highly allergic to new age, you might not. That said, he's still playing the hell out of his instrument, and it gets more disquieting than I expected at times.

Yeah, I included it in my upcoming Stereogum column but I said it's not jazz so much as something you'd listen to while getting acupuncture.

a couple of live Sons of Kemet sets appeared on Dime a couple fo weeks ago. May still be up there. I think they were 24/48 so sound good but filesize largish

xp
Definitely best to not expect jazz. But listening to it reminded me I've been meaning to check out Tony Scott's zen/yoga meditation albums, so I think you could say there's a strain of "jazz musician exploration" history he's tapping into (though now I'm listening to the Zen one and it would be pretty ludicrous to call this jazz)

It's really lovely. I guess it's his pandemic album, but it also makes me wonder if he saw how the Alabaster DePlume album took off and thought "but I'm a real sax player, I can do that one better", lol. I really like it though.

I've been listening to 'Afrikan Culture', and although a lot of it is gentle, there are weird, unsettling [Rob used the word 'disquieting'] moments on this album that you wouldn't get on a meditation/relaxation album.

Still waiting for my copy to get here, but was really intrigued by the Flock album out on Strut:

Flock is a brand new collaboration between five leading musicians from London's open-minded jazz and experimental scenes: Bex Burch (Vula Viel), Sarathy Korwar, Dan “Danalogue” Leavers (Soccer96, The Comet Is Coming), Al MacSween (Maisha) and Tamar Osborn (Collocutor).

Gathering together at The Fish Factory in London Summer 2020, the approach was to try something fresh. “I wrote texts as scores for the session and the emphasis was on breathing and listening to each other,” explains Bex Burch. “Improvisation is composition in itself,” continues Burch, “so although the music was freely improvised, we sometimes chose to stay on form and rhythm, repeating melodies and groove. As Dan commented on the day, we ‘murmurated’. The expansive 13-minute piece ‘How Many Are One’ on the album is the perfect example, a collective following and leading as the music developed.”

https://flock.bandcamp.com/album/flock-2

Looks v. appealing, thanks---speaking of Soccer96, I said this in 2022 round-up (put their alb on ballots):

Every day I go to school, putting on the headset and smoking Soccer96's Dopamine, riding the drone that takes me to canyons of cans and The Great Spot of Eternal Storm—oops, a little to the left now—another spectacular day at the office. Can't afford to get too jaded, and it's not our job: must send thoughtful reports periodically, cerebrations and celebrations in a minor key, moody with it but also the trace of a voice in the wraparound windscreen is more than answered by excellent passers by, and some ravenous work-outs, solos-as accompaniment, recalling , in effect though not pedantically, Keith Moon, Elvin Jones, and Michael Prain of Die! Die! Die!, Soccer96 being keyboards x drum kit subset of The Comet Is Coming, sometimes aligned with Sons of Kemet, Shabaka and the Ancestors, maybe others.

After 10 years we have decided that from the end of our scheduled 2022 shows we will be closing this chapter of the band’s life for the foreseeable future. We’re excited to play our remaining gigs for you and to make this summer a fitting send off pic.twitter.com/3OceZqj1jz

— Sons Of Kemet (@SonsOfKemet) June 1, 2022

Speaking of Sons of Kemet.... damn. No doubt these guys will continue with other existing and new projects, but damn, still a loss.

oh no, that sucks! wow I'm super glad I risked seeing them in April now

wtf

oh no. That's my fave Shabaka project

FUUUUCK I missed them in March because they played on a Monday, I'd had a crazy packed weekend, and I was seeing D/D and Low on Tuesday.