"We will learn what happened on the record, but once it comes back into the live show, it really starts to change again, and it evolves because, in a live show, you’ve got to bridge all of the tracks. Things start to happen spontaneously in the show. Sometimes by accident, sometimes we allow things to happen. I think of that as decomposition, where you had the finished composition and now it’s starting almost to disintegrate” - the Comet is Coming drummer Max 'Betamax' Hallett says in the PopMatters interview. The band is deep in the tour part of the writing-editing-touring cycle, and they will be back to writing - “but to do that, we need to be ready, but we also need to be blank. The canvas needs to be white; there needs to be nothing there, so we’re ready to do something new".

Space-jazz masters The Comet Is Coming released their hybrid new single 'Imminent' featuring MC Joshua Idehen; Thou & Emma Ruth Rundle released a mighty cover of Cranberries' 'Hollywood'; screamo boys For Your Health released 'Birthday Candles in the Effigy' with a ballerina dancing to it in a sinister video; Burial, Four Tet, and Thom Yorke collaborated on two new moody songs 'Her Revolution' and 'His Rope'.

Electronic duo Nightports invite a collaborator into their glitching realm. The collaborator improvises and Nightports will manipulate the recordings into one cohesive artwork. This time around they invited The Comet is Coming drummer Betamax who gave them his "quick fire tubthumping". The resulting album is on the edges of experimental and pop music but also, as the Quietus says, "a thought-provoking undertaking. It is made interesting by its wild-eyed invention, and Nightports’ constant ability to get melody and ambience from the recordings they’re working with. But it’s made enjoyable by the energetic performance of Betamax behind the drum kit".

A great combo - Doves made a song 'Carousels', forwarded it to The Comet Is Coming to remix it, turned out atmospheric, groovy, jazzy; Kudela made a great video for the stunning Katie Gately song 'Flow'; JPEGMAFIA shared new song 'Living Single', a kinda experimental trap; the "garage-rock Serge Gainsbourg" Liminanas dropped 'Calentita'; Tricky has a new singer, Marta, and a new clubby trip 'Thinking of'; Alex Kapranos and Clara Luciani covered 'Summer Wine', a perfect summer song, of course; dark rock collective Crippled Black Phoenix features a handful of guests on catchy 'Cry of Love'; Mike Huguenor released a tender blues 'Evening Light Seen Through a Window'.

"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”.

Saxophone player Alabaster DePlume changes the line-up of his band before every show to keep him on his toes - “It’s so we don’t have the time to be prepared. When you remove preparation people can’t hide, they have to be authentic and present" - as he's told the Quietus. He has released his new album 'To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1', with no vocal tracks, obviously, because someone had told him - "I put your music on, and it was perfect, but then you started shouting something about a pig. Can’t it just be the nice bits?". The songs were recorded by DePlume and a one-off band consisting of Sarathy Korwar, Donna Thompson, James Howard, The Comet Is Coming’s Dan ‘Danalogue’ Leavers and Snapped Ankles’ Chestnutt. The Q describes the music as "gorgeous and soothing, intimate and direct".

Jazz is more serious than other genres - jazz requires exactly as much or as little expertise to listen to and appreciate as anything else

Jazz was born in New Orleans - it emerged almost simultaneously in a number of different communities

Jazz must swing - jazz artists are prone to experimenting with unusual time signatures

Jazz musicians were (or are) on drugs - early propaganda designed to paint black communities as dens of iniquity, and create reasons to arrest them

Jazz is dead - it’s integral to hip-hop and vibrant jazz scenes in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Canada

"'The Afterlife' is just as much a psychedelic rock album as it is a jazz album" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about new album by UK space-jazz band, their second this year. "Dan Leavers’ synths make it just as rooted in modern UK electronic music as Shabaka’s sax makes it rooted in modern UK jazz. Save for […]

Guardian writes how jazz is having a moment in the UK lately. The signs? Streaming sites are reporting a growth in young listeners, mainstream artists are collaborating with jazz stars and big music festivals are signing up more jazz acts than ever. The names deserving credit the most - Sons of Kemet and The Comet […]

The Quietus picked out six albums from the month of march, including one of their favourite bands, These New Puritans' 'Inside the Rose', British art-rockers' first since 2013. Leyland James Kirby is also one one of their favourites, he published the album 'Everywhere at the end of time – Stage 6' with his band The […]

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 […]