The groundbreaking London-based two horn-two drummer quartet known as Sons of Kemet featuring saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, tuba player Theon Cross, and drummers Tom Skinner and Edward Wakili-Hick have returned following their breakthrough 2018 Mercury Prize-nominated album Your Queen Is a Reptile, with their most adventurous and collaborative album to date, titled Black To The Future.

With a majority of the album recorded in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, the recording certainly rises to the moment and doesn’t hold back, harnessing those emotions of anger, sorrow, joy and hope into what amounts to 11 songs, which titles form a poem and mission statement in what hopes to guide us to a better and more just future.

Similar to their other superb recordings, this brilliant new album features high-octane horn melodies and screaming solos, layered over intricate percussive rhythms and pulsating grooves, drawing on influences of Caribbean Soca, Afrobeat, Ethio-jazz, dub, and UK grime. The session also finds Hutchings playing clarinet on a number of the tracks, giving some of the tracks a different dynamic from what we’ve heard in the past.

The record also features a number of special guests, including rapper Kojey Radical, British grime heavyweight MC D Double E, highly influential poets Joshua Idehen, and Moor Mother of the Irreversible Entanglements, as well as Chicago-based cosmic spiritual jazz clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid. Each one of them has a strong presence on each of the tracks they are included on, and helps provide new dimensions to the group’s overall sound.

With Black To The Future, Sons of Kemet continue to make incredible and substantive music with purpose that’s always one step ahead of the pack. Hopefully we will see a second Mercury Prize nomination (and this time winning!) with this new release, it would definitely have my vote.

Sons of Kemet — Black To The Future
(Impulse! Records)

1. Field Negus (w/ Joshua Idehen)
2. Pick Up Your Burning Cross (w/ Moor Mother & Angel Bat Dawid)
3. Think Of Home
4. Hustle (w/ Kojey Radical)
5. For The Culture (w/ D Double E)
6. To Never Forget The Source
7. In Remembrance Of Those Fallen
8. Let The Circle Be Unbroken
9. Envision Yourself Levitating
10. Throughout The Madness, Stay Strong
11. Black (w/ Joshua Idehen)

BUY RECORD

• Jazz
• Jazz Dance
• Spiritual Jazz