While our desire for crazy asteroids called to put an end to this massacre of civilization is waning, let’s be satisfied with the comet of Shabaka Hutchings arrived at dispatch number four. Viatory terminology and cosmic-futuristic imagery for a project and a record obviously on the crest between the steroid technologization of music and alien and alienated visionary, focused on the “future of technology, humanity and spirituality” like many of the post-pandemic productions and that it is inserted in a discography that is now substantial in terms of number and level as regards quality.
On the sides of King Shabaka (tenor sax) we find, as usual, Danalogue (born Dan Leavers: keyboards, electronics) and Betamax (or Max Hallett on drums) and just as usual they are the latter to innervate the sound of the trio, moving it nimbly, almost with an (in) natural nonchalance, from Impulse horizons! of reference to those from the alien dancefloor, combining the dimensions that were generically cosmic-jazz with a push, as mentioned above, an even more full-bodied steroid on the beat and dance side in the strict sense; a term to be taken with the springs of course, since it is still resemantized according to the directives of the King, who glides and phrases and starts river again with his sax increasingly free and aware, almost as if the closure of the other big band, the Sons Of Kemethad definitely made him concentrate on Comets.
Alien dancefloor, it was said, broken, nervous, humoral and prismatic as you listen to in Technicolor, especially in the second half, in which rhythmic schizophrenia and stylistic transversality create a hybrid that tosses the listener to Mars and back without the use of drugs. Or the pompous and swollen proceeding of Pyramids, all maximalism and arrogance (of rhythms, of saxophone, of atmosphere) with his making karst resurfaces almost a straight box (it is not, but it seems to be). Or even in one Atomic Wave Dance which takes the afro-beat, pumps it to the limit of ca (co) foni (co) and rushes into an iridescent whirlwind of splinters and (dust of) stars.
Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam however, it is not an album that lives only on steroidance floor, but also on union / contrast between opposites, of extreme freedom in varying between dynamics and even apparently distant dimensions and which demonstrates a desire for research and a compositional dynamism that makes Comet one of the bands more particular and of Shabaka one of the points of reference of the “new jazz”. Take that black hole that is Angel Of Darknessdeep space and abysses of sound, an almost sludge undercurrent proceeding, atmospheric-cinematic keyboards and a sax that is a thorn in the side, in a sort of Afro version of Ultralyd’s ugliness, Noxagt or similar Scandinavian projects. Or the twisted synth-sci-fi of Aftermath, that seem to lower Carpenter into a nightmare in deep space and that instead turns everything upside down by dint of pastoral flutins in a kind of Jodorowsky black, all soul and abstract spirituality. Or the hard-soul-prog (ok, it’s a fucking definition but listen to it and have your say, it’ll be fine anyway because it’s really a lot of stuff put together) of the final Mystik, that if possible still displaces us and takes another shot. The last of this record, the first of the next, because the comet has not yet arrived but the path it is tracing is one of the most evident and exciting.
Comet Is Coming. “Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam”, the union / contrast between opposites