Jazz certainly wasn't born in London, but it's always hada home there. There has been an innovative jazz scene in London going back to the so-called Canterbury bands of the 1970s like Nucleus, Colosseum, and Soft Machine. Far from traditionalists, these bands fearlessly created early forms of fusion by mixing free jazz with psychedelic rock, funk, and anything else available.
At the moment, the London standard bearer for this kind of music is the British-Barbadian Shabaka Hutchings, a saxophonist, clarinetist and bandleader who, in addition to his own numerous bands, has played saxophone with the Sun Ra Arkestra, Floating Points, Mulatu Astatke, Polar Bear, Melt Yourself Down and Heliocentrics. A compulsive collaborator, DownBeat magazine called him “Britain’s best export.”
A few years ago, Hutchings jammed onstage with the funk tandem of keyboardist Dan Leavers and drummer Maxwell Hallett. Their immediate chemistry resulted in the band The Comet Is Coming.
The Comet Is Coming play a fusion of electronica, funk, hard bop, and post-rock suited to fans of both Medeski Martin & Wood and of Faust. The trio debuted with 2015’s Prophecy, but their first proper full-length, 2016’s Channel the Spirits, showed that they could fold traces of Steve Reich, Neu!, Sun Ra, and Albert Ayler into a futuristic vision of jazz and funk. A group of equals in which writing responsibilities are shared and no one takes a clear leading role despite Hutchings’ rising status, The Comet is Coming is a blast of global jazz, a sign of life in a genre badly needing a resurrection.
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