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Friday 28 October 2022

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

2 comments:

The Swede said...

I'm out of the loop - I missed this new album completely. I caught them live three or four years ago and it was an intense, memorable show.

Swiss Adam said...

I can imagine it would be Swede.