Not only is Shabaka Hutchings a defining figure within the London jazz scene, through countless collaborations he has also become one of Britain’s most influential musicians. Many of his admirers were correspondingly surprised when, on the previous album Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (2024), he seemed to turn away from everything for which he had previously been valued: the record consisted of flute-based, meditative sounds.
He has now picked up the saxophone again after all. On his new solo album, released on the newly founded label Shabaka Records, he integrates different facets of his musical personality into a coherent whole; alongside the tenor saxophone, he works here with percussion and woodwind instruments as well as synthesisers. The danceable, forceful qualities that defined his former bands Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming do flash through in places, for instance on the propulsive, cheerfully stumbling track »Marva Mountain«, where several horn lines rub up against one another.
And yet the often more sketch-like pieces breathe in a different way from before. Also new: some tracks contain spoken-word moments and rap passages, among them »Go Astray«, which draws its drive not only from Shabaka’s sonorous voice but also from experimental beat tinkering. Of the Earth, which Shabaka wrote, played and produced entirely by himself, is contemporary spiritual jazz – and something very much its own.
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