"It would take the second comings of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Horace Silver and Lee Morgan to threaten to dislodge it" - All About Jazz says reviewing the London drummer's debut album. Tom Skinner is the co-founder of Sons of Kemet, and the Smile, whereas on 'Voices...' he is accompanied by bassist Tom Herbert of the influential Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland, tenor saxophonists Shabaka Hutchings of SOK and The Comet Is Coming, as well as Nubya Garcia and cellist Kareem Dayes. "As jazz supergroups go, this is the coyote's cojones", AAZ points out, calling the album "exalted jazz... by turns tumultuous... and meditative".

"The aim of artists is to put information out there, and when people are ready, they can come to it - and hopefully further themselves" - Sons of Kemet frontman Shabaka Hutchings says in Downbeat interview about their latest album 'Black to the Future' and sending messages with music. "If you have a surface-level understanding of racism or the legacy that we’re referring to, then if you encounter the music and suspect there is something deeper [with] the rhetoric around the album, and the message behind the album, it gives you clues and hints of ways to explore. For me, that’s the best thing, in that it gives people a way of going forward".

“You can think of music as being a thing in itself that is just sonic, but I don't think it is. Music is part of a bigger scheme of what your world view is, and what your temperament is at any given time” - Sons of Kemet's leader Shabaka Hutchings says in the Quietus interview ahead of their new album 'Black to the Future'. The recording process was shaped with time in mind - "What we did is we recorded the drums, we played for ten, 15 minutes, before the tuba came in. I might play the melody many times. The idea is that kind of communality, where you want to get out of the individual anxiety of what specifically you're playing, so it can just become a group enterprise, and it can only become a group enterprise after we've been playing circularly for ages”.

Carlos Niño is joined by Jamael Dean and Shabaka Hutchings on the meditative minimal jazz 'Please, Wake Up'; Mick Jenkins shares 'Designer Frames' produced by Kaytranada in his signature dance-rap style; Writhing Squares' 'Chart for the Solution' is an 11-minute one-chord jam; DeVotchKa shares nice orchestral movie-music 'Lose You in the Crowd' from 'The True Adventures of Wolfboy'; Helado Negro covers Deerhunter’s 'Futurism' for a new compilation featuring artists from the 4AD's roster covering songs from throughout the label’s 40-year archive.

New album 'We Are Sent Here By History' by Shabaka & The Ancestors is conceptualised as a sonic poem that would tell the story of the end of the world as we currently perceive it. “You behold the things that have been masking the truth; the idea of civilisation and the idea of enlightenment” - as band's leader Shabaka Hutchings tells in the Quietus interview. The first step “has to be linked to the idea of deconstructing masculinity. Deconstructing what it means to be a man masked”, and then we need to “explore the possibilities of appraising a collective reality as opposed to saying we need to drift towards one dominant one”.

"People think that history is finite, but it is something that needs to be explored constantly; it needs to be challenged and sometimes set alight, so we don’t continue to make the same mistakes... For there to be a change, there needs to be the end of what we want changed" - the great saxophone player Shabaka Hutchings told the Guardian ahead of the new album by Shabaka and His Ancestors 'We Are Sent Here by History (out March 13). But, he sees himself as an optimist - “I feel really positive about the future... Because there is always a fraught tension before things change – things really do have to get worse before they get better”.

Praise the universe! - the London electro-jazz band The Comet Is Coming have a new album out, 'Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery'. It is their second full length, next to two EPs, not to mention awesome Sons of Kemet and Shabaka Hutchings and his Ancestors, band's saxophonist's other projects. "This is hardcore […]