With collective accomplishments including work from Polar Bear, Hello Skinny, Melt Yourself Down, Sun Ra’s Arkestra and the Heliocentrics, it’s no surprise that Sons of Kemet have earned the label as a jazz supergroup.
Lead by composer, sax and flute player Shabaka Hutchings, and joined by drummers Tom Skinner, Seb Rochford and newest recruit Theon Cross on the tuba, the group now release their second album Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do, which Shabaka describes as “a meditation on the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain”. Tropical roots are certainly felt on the LP in a collection of textures and insatiable rhythms delivered by some of today’s most progressive British jazz talents.
We’re delighted to premiere our favourite cut from the record, named after the commonly grown fruit in the Caribbean. Hips and feet will be swaying along to the energising combination of Skinner and Rochford who build up the track’s driving soca style groove, providing the perfect foil for Cross’s enduring breath-work. Just as the fruit can be prepared in many different ways, Shabaka’s gracefully agile clarinet lines continuously guide you away to new and colourful spaces but never veering too far off the original feel, always coming back to the melodic riff.
Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do is out now via Naim Jazz Records. Catch Sons of Kemet in London on 13th Nov (as part of the London Jazz Festival) and in Bristol on 18th Nov.