THE COMET IS COMING

The Afterlife IMPULSE!

8/10

Second 2019 release from exploratory UK jazz trio

Shabaka Hutchings may be the most hard-working man in UK jazz, his fiery saxophone at the centre of not one, but three key London ensembles – The Comet Is Coming, Sons Of Kemet and Shabaka And The Ancestors. Comet is the more cosmically inclined of the three, and The Afterlife – a sort of sister piece to March’s Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery – if anything only intensifies their spirit of spiritual contemplation and synth-powered repetition. Poet Joshua Idehen adds desperate, apocalyptic testimony to the opening “All That Matters Is The

Moments”, while “The Lifeforce Part I” and “II” gradually dial up the intensity, Hutchings blowing with dervish energy as drums and synth lock into a spiralling groove.