Sons of Kemet

About this event

Presented by Improvised Music Company & ChoiceCuts

Sons of Kemet, a rambunctious double-drumming quartet led by saxophonist/clarinetist Shabaka Hutchings, will be taking the Sugar Club by storm this April 6th. Sons of Kemet erupted onto the scene in 2013 with their album Burn, securing rave reviews and scooping up a MOBO Award for Best Jazz Act. Their newest album Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do, has been received with equal acclaim, securing a spot on Jim Carroll’s best albums of 2015 list, and the band are now ready to bring their hypnotic tunes on tour. Hutchings draws on a motley collection of influences, bringing links to early Caribbean and Rastafarian music, Afrobeat rhythms and funky New Orleans brass into play. He refers to the most recent album as “a mediation on the Caribbean diaspora in Britain”. This intriguing melting pot is fuelled by the voracious beats of the two drummers Tom Skinner and Seb Rochford and overlaid with Theon Cross’s versatile tuba playing, which lends both bass and melody to the tracks.

This is jazz, but perhaps not as you know it; it’s fresh, accessible and loaded with cultural capitol. The quartet creates eloquent sound-worlds; their music is imbued with cultural commentary, layered into the oppressive drumbeats and drawling saxophone. They can shift tone in an instant, carrying the audience with them into previously untraveled sonic worlds. Hutchings said, “We can let our musicality take on a life of its own. When we play live, we know what the end result is: everyone in hysteria. But how we get there is anyone’s guess.”