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.