The Comet Is Coming - Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery [2019]

Published on NextBop

In recent years, Shabaka Hutchings has arguably become the face of the London jazz scene. This status has not arrived without merit, as the tenor sax/bass clarinetist has recently led and been a part of a slew of quality albums, including Your Queen Is A Reptile (Sons of Kemet) and La saboteuse (Yazz Ahmed) and Wisdom of Elders (Shabaka and the Ancestors). Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery by The Comet Is Coming, a band made up of Shabaka (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), Danalogue (synthesizer, keyboards) and Beatmax (drums), is another fine album that further solidifies Hutchings' status as one of the key artists in modern jazz.

Black Midi - Schlagenheim [2019]

Geordie Greep (guitar, vocals), Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (guitar, vocals), Cameron Picton (bass, vocals) and Morgan Simpson (drums) are Black Midi - a London-based rock band that many international fans stumbled across by way of a scintillating 2018 KEXP live session. The band's visceral yet complex nature was startling, especially considering the fact that each member looked like they could be in high school. Moments of their sound invited classification, but the disparate nature of the whole seemed to ask the listener to do away with concrete labels entirely. For rock aficionados hell-bent on labels, one could say noise-rock, post-punk and math-rock each have a sizeable steak in whatever people feel like calling Schlagenheim. With the impressive nature of the KEXP session and the Black Midi's already much hyped live reputation in the London scene, the question was always going to be whether they could deliver in a studio session - Schlagenheim answers that with an emphatic yes.