Aftermath

The Comet Is Coming, an avant- jazz/ psychedelic/ electronic/ funk trio, came back in September with a new album that I'm only catching up with now. The three members- clarinetist and saxophonist King Shabaka, keyboard player Danalogue and drummer Betamax- hold nothing back, pushing everything as far as they and it can go. Back in 2016 Shabaka told The Quietus, 'Go as hard as possible within being musical' and they live up to that with their music. The new album, titled Hyper- Dimensional Expansion Beam, has a track on it called Aftermath, which starts out with fast synthbass, sounding like the theme to Stranger Things sped up and amped up, and then shifts deeper into 80s soundtrack territory, into the realms of Vangelis' Blade Runner or John Carpenter's Escape From New York, re- imagined and then taken further, synth and keyboard solos and runs rolling around on top. 

Back in 2019 their second album Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery came to my attention after I was tipped off by a friend about this track, Summon The Fire, a sax and drums led masterpiece, the rhythms and keys twisting around, long cinematic synth chords pushing buttons, and the horn parts suggesting something both euphoric and dystopic. 

Summon The Fire

Summon Nautilus

A friend whose musical judgement I trust has recently suggested that this song is the song of the year.



The Comet Is Coming are a futurist jazz three piece- Danalogue plays synths and keyboards, Betamax plays drums and King Shabaka plays saxophone. The song above, Summon The Fire, is as much fast psychedelic dance music, amped up rave, supercharged cosmic prog or weirdo punk as it is jazz. They get compared to Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane a lot and I don't really know enough about either of those two to comment I'm afraid. But I do know that Summon The Fire is a total blast with its huge fuzz bassline, ace skronking sax , fast rattling drums and sweeping synth sounds, is over and done in under four minutes and has one eye firmly looking forwards. The album, Trust In the Life Force Of The Deep Mystery, is clearly worth checking out on this basis.

My friend also suggested in a separate social media post that this is the track of the decade.



Also new to me, Nautilus came out back in 2012. Anna Meredith is a composer who came out of the proms and symphonies world and towards, for want of a better word, pop. In 2016 she released an album called Varmints, experimental and electronic. This has led her to perform with the likes of James Blake and These New Puritans. Nautilus, which if you've clicked above you'll now be familiar with, opens with a fanfare of horns and doesn't let up, techni-coloured and hyper music, a supervillain's theme tune, the opening music to the news in the 23rd century, a march for aliens as they disembark.

Track of the decade is something I hadn't considered writing about. I haven't even finished a 2019 list yet. I just realised as well, that today is the winter solstice and after today, the longest and darkest of days, it starts getting lighter longer a little bit every day. That's worth raising a glass to.