What happened to The Comet is Coming? The UK jazz trailblazers are splitting up at the end of 2023, but Shabaka Hutchings giving up the saxophone isn’t the whole story …
- The Comet is Coming are among the most exciting acts to emerge from the recent ‘UK jazz explosion’ – a fiery cosmic brew of Betamax’s club beats, Shabaka’s soaring sax, and Danalouge’s psych synths
- But the trio are spacing out ‘potentially forever’ after a swansong gig at Hong Kong’s Freespace Jazz Festival … so what happened? Style got the full story from leader/keyboardist, Dan Leavers
The Comet has been Coming for some time now. In fact, to those paying any attention, The Comet Arrived years ago, blasting through the stratosphere with the 2016 release of Mercury Prize-nominated debut album Channel the Spirits. Crashing against the earth’s surface three years later with major-label debut Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery. Sparking sonic shock waves with last year’s swansong Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam …
And now The Comet is speeding off again to another dimension. Not one we’ll ever likely get to experience, mind. “They, comets, do tend to come back around,” says keyboardist, producer and musical mastermind Danalogue, wistfully conceding the band’s imminent dissolution is “potentially forever”. That’s right. A decade after they first gathered for a one-off jam that would help spark an entire musical movement, the trio is going their own ways. “Basically I think we all want to do some different stuff,” he adds, “and I think that’s fine.”