Shabaka Hutchings talks The Comet is Coming, relentless touring and maintaining a sense of the ridiculous

When composer and sax player Shabaka Hutchings met his bandmates in Mercury-nominated trio The Comet is Coming it was a match made in jazz heaven, he tells Jane Cornwell
Ubiquitous talent: Shabaka Hutchings is part of many ensembles and projects
Tracey Paddison/Alamy
Jane Cornwell26 August 2016

I’ve just finished watching a video of King Shabaka flying through space, blasting sax riffs while wearing retro-shades and sitting on the head of a giant fire-breathing dinosaur — a promo clip for Do the Milky Way by Mercury-nominated trio The Comet is Coming — when Shabaka Hutchings arrives early at a café near his home in east London, looming at my elbow in the way of the very tall.

“I’ll have a mint tea with lemon,” he says, lanky and bespectacled in a T-shirt emblazoned with text, his shock of short dreads reinforcing his air of hip geekiness. “I’ve got a bit of a cold. Things have been pretty mad lately.”

Hutchings is used to demanding schedules. One of Britain’s most prolific saxophonists, bandleaders and composers, the London-born, Barbados-raised 32-year-old juggles manifold projects. There he is in The Comet is Coming alongside synth player Dan Leavers (aka Danalogue the Conqueror) and drummer Max Hallett (aka Betamax Killer). There he is fronting Sons of Kemet, that Mobo-winning supergroup featuring sax, tuba and twin drumkits.

There he is with Shabaka and the Ancestors, a band of South African jazzers with a debut album out on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label next month. There, in post-punk exoticists Melt Yourself Down, and there, as a sideman with everyone from Heliocentrics, Polar Bear and Sun Ra Arkestra — the big band founded by the late jazz jester and Afrofuturism pioneer — to electronic acts Floating Points and Leafcutter John. Not to mention a roll-call of cameos. The man is everywhere.

‘Beneath all the mystery and fun there’s a combined knowledge about our position in the cosmos’

&#13; <p> </p>&#13;

“It only seems that way,” he tells me. “My name might appear on an album sleeve but some things only take an hour of my time. I’ll work with a person once if I think they’re cool, but the things I do repeatedly are in bands where the music stimulates me.”

This being festival season Hutchings is in even higher demand than usual. The previous week, having finished a set at a jazz festival in southern France at 3.45am, he and his Sons of Kemet bandmates drove straight to the airport and were sound-checking at a cross-genre ding-dong in Portugal a few hours later.

Two days after that they wowed Shoreditch’s African Street Style Festival — then Hutchings swapped the hooded cape he wears in Kemet for a vest with a peace sign and went to play another European festival with The Comet is Coming.

“It’s fine, I don’t need to sleep any more,” he quips, blowing his nose with a honk. Next week he’s off to play an Ancestors gig in Johannesburg. Having had a South African (now ex) girlfriend, he’s been to-ing and fro-ing to her motherland for several years. “I can see how touring musicians burn out,” he says. “The adrenaline pushes you through these high-energy gigs but then you crash all at once.”

For now, though, Hutchings is thriving on the explosive synergy that comes with throwing jazz, electronica, psychedelia, Caribbean rhythms, Nigerian Afrobeat, B-movie silliness and highbrow philosophy into the pot.

Critics agree: The Comet is Coming’s debut Channel the Spirits (released on the Leaf label) has been nominated for the Mercury Prize alongside albums by David Bowie and Radiohead. Which, for a record that kicks off with two minutes of brass caterwauling and spacey bleeps from a band without a vocalist and a sax player as a bandleader, is no mean feat. “It was a complete surprise to be chosen,” says Hutchings. “Especially since we didn’t even mean to make an album. We just got together and jammed.”

Latest music reviews

1/168

The trio’s genesis is the stuff of hipster legend. Leavers and Hallett were gigging in their synths-and-drums duo Soccer96 when Hutchings sidled up to the stage with his saxophone and asked if he could join in (“It created an explosive shockwave of energy,” Hallett has said).

In September 2013, having bonded over a mutual love of sci-fi, Sun Ra and sonic freedom they went into the studio at Dalston’s Total Refreshment Centre — a house of vibes that recalls the New York loft scene of the mid-1970s — pressed Record and jammed for three days.

“It all sounded pretty good; we have the same feel for where things should rise and fall.” A grin. “In the evenings friends would come and party. Which is how artists like Fela Kuti recorded, with the vibe at peak potential.”

An EP, Prophecy, was released in October 2015, its cover featuring a crystal in the thrusting hand of King Shabaka — a pseudonym that pays homage to the ancient Nubian ruler who enabled Kemeticism, a revival of the religion of Ancient Egypt, a belief system vital to Hutching’s hero Sun Ra.

What with tracks called things like Slam Dunk in a Black Hole, music videos that reference science-fiction and B-movies and a remit to get people dancing like it’s the end of the world, space is indeed the place for The Comet is Coming.

‘As a defence from the culture shock I shut myself down and went into practice mode’

&#13; <p> </p>&#13;

“Beneath all the mystery and fun there’s a combined knowledge about our position in the cosmos,” says Hutchings, who also publishes academic essays and delivers the occasional lecture. “Dan and Max know about constellations and quantum physics. I have lots of esoteric theories. Together it becomes big.”

Hutchings has always been a thinker. The son of a Jamaican graphic designer, a Rastafarian, and a Barbadian mother, an English teacher with a degree in political science, he moved to Barbados aged six and began studying clarinet at nine, playing in classical ensembles, calypso and reggae bands and jazz groups. At 16 he relocated with his mother to Birmingham, where the hierarchies at his all-boys grammar school sent him inwards.

“As a defence from the culture shock I shut myself down and went into practice mode.” He smiles. “I’d borrow CDs from the library and listen to them over and over. I wouldn’t go out except to a jam run by Soweto Kinch” — the award-winning saxophonist, rapper and BBC Radio 3 host — “or I’d go to his house and practice.”

In 2003 Hutchings won a place at London’s Guildhall School of Music and involved himself in Jazz Jamaica and Tomorrow’s Warriors, groups that champion and nurture young British jazz musicians. Then came a stint of solo free-jazz improvisation and, aged 27, a bout of depression. “I couldn’t see the point,” he says with a shrug. “I’d kind of lost the soul.”

He found it again, slowly, taking to the stage as he does now, standing strong with his legs splayed, holding his sax out in front of him. A King Shabaka in the making.

The Comet is Coming may or may not scoop the Mercury, which is now open to public vote (“A bit unfair since it’s meant to be a music merit prize and we’re the little unknown dudes without any capital for mainstream advertising”). These days Hutchings is doing what he wants to do, outside of categories and labels, creating a formidable body of work in the process.

Oh, and maintaining a sense of the ridiculous: “The world is crazy right now,” says Hutchings. “You have to laugh or you’d cry.”

The Comet is Coming play Shambala festival, Northamptonshire on Sunday (shambalafestival.org), the Hyundai Mercury Music Prize ceremony, Eventim Apollo, W6, on September 15, and XOYO, EC2 (xoyo.co.uk) on November 15

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT