London-based trio The Comet Is Coming, formed by
saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings (who played in Sun Ra's Arkestra),
keyboardist Dan Leavers and drummer Max Hallett,
debuted with the five-song EP Prophecy (2015) in a vein of
rocking instrumental jazztronica.
The driving Neon Baby sounds like a saxophone-led jazz version of Neu.
The even more savage
Star Exploding in Slow Motion blends
surreal synth sounds, discreet sax sounds and African drums until the sax
intones a Jimi Hendrix-ian solo.
The frenzied dance single Do the Milky Way is a showcase for the saxophone's effervescent melodic improvisation but also for the eclectic percussion style.
The mysterious atmosphere of Cosmic Serpent sounds like a romantic
ballad crossed with Jon Hassell's fourth-world music.
Channel the Spirits (Leaf, 2016)
contains the propulsive single Space Carnival, with astral drumming and a saxophone that keeps changing repetitive phrases,
the exuberant rockabilly Cosmic Dust, where the dialogue between sax and synth remains atonal,
the pounding and dizzying Star Furnace, driven by a massive bass synth line and with the saxophone melody fragmented and refracted until it becomes
a theme for whirling dervishes,
and the slow goofy hip-hop dance Slam Dunk Through a Black Hole.
The saxophone sings the catchy motifs of Journey Through the Asteroid Belt with the counterpoint of creative drumming and bubbling electronics,
and New Age against busy African drumming and new-age synth lines,
the two relaxed moments of an album that mostly sounds like a battlefield.
Hallett is a force of nature, one of the greatest drummers of his generation.
Leavers and Hallett were also in Soccer96, and
Hutchings was also active in the Sons Of Kemet,
in Polar Bear, in Melt Yourself Down and in
Shabaka and the Ancestors.
Shabaka and the Ancestors released Wisdom of Elders (Brownswood, 2016).
The four-song EP Death to the Planet (2017) contains another
surreal infectious dance, the single Final Eclipse, with a coda
of collective mayhem, but
Start Running introduced a more pensive atmosphere,
and the eight-minute March of the Rising Sun
is mostly a demonstration of technical prowess in the vein of prog-rock
of the 1970s. By their standards, Ascension is a ballad for Caribbean
lounges.
Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery (Impulse, 2019) further reduced the impact.
Because the End Is Really the Beginning is moody and a bit magniloquent,
Unity and Astral Flying are just moody.
The saxophone sings the nostalgic aria of Birth of Creation, worthy
of a film soundtrack of the 1960s.
The eight-minute Blood of the Past is a heavy blues interrupted by
Kate Tempest's spoken word and with a melodramatic coda.
The ebullient numbers, Super Zodiac and
only marginally reignite the fire of
Star Exploding in Slow Motion and
Cosmic Dust.
It is a more user-friendly sound, that avoids the jarring excesses of the first
album.
The quasi-techno single Summon the Fire even boasts a symphonic crescendo, and Timewave Zero is a passionate Brazilian ballad.
The six-song EP The Afterlife (Impulse, 2019) continued the trend towards
a less confrontational sound with the sleepy sophisticated The Afterlife
and the menacing but elegant ballad The Seven Planetary Heaven, with only
the feverish Lifeforce Part II left to represent the wild dancing side of their canon.
The Comet Is Coming returned with
Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam (Impulse, 2022), devoted to a curious
dance-funk-jazz-rock hybrid, with Code sounding like
the
Love Of Life Orchestra, and
Angel of Darkness sounding like a cosmic Sun Ra on drugs.