Shabaka
Of the Earth
SHABAKA
Although recent years have seen the remarkable 2010s transatlantic nu-jazz explosion cool off a bit, one of its most interesting aftershocks has been a crop of acts working in jazz’s more spiritual outer realms. Floating Points collaborated with the great Pharoah Sanders on the minimal, magical 2021 album Promises; US-based collective Irreversible Entanglements continue to push spiritual jazz to its incendiary limits; the likes of Nubya Garcia and Kamasi Washington have built a career on grand, cosmic-scaled epics; even André 3000 surprised the world with his divisive flute-based album New Blue Sun.
London-based saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings has been one of this fervent era of jazz’s most overtly transcendent thinkers. Among myriad other collaborations, his Sons of Kemet project dragged the genre back through space-time to connect with the African diaspora, while The Comet Is Coming blasted off in search of propulsive new jazz-rock lands. However, in 2023, Hutchings announced he would be taking a hiatus from his signature instrument due to the emotional and physical strain of touring it, shifting his creative focus instead to woodwinds. This change-up might give you a false idea of his third solo album, Of the Earth. It’s not as ferocious as anything by The Comet Is Coming, but nor is it as sparse as the André 3000 album, which Hutchings contributed shakuhachi (a Japanese bamboo flute) to. Like its title, these 12 tracks find the perfect middle ground, rejecting the distant cosmos and murky recesses of history in favor of the strange melodies and wondrous rhythms of human existence.
Alongside various, sometimes-obscure woodwind instruments, Hutchings has also developed a nascent interest in beatmaking, which is put to intriguing use across Of the Earth. His brain is wired too differently to mimic even the abstracted psych-hop of someone like Flying Lotus. Instead, his beats are skittish, lacking any sort of Dilla-inspired swing. “Call the Power” is driven by layers of rapid handclaps, while “Ol’ Time African Gods” is all over the place, free of easy grooves and making use of a full array of rhythms and textures. There’s a genuine freeness to the music—not in the cacophonous free-jazz mold, but in the sense that ideas are allowed to enter or exit the fray at will. Layers of instrumentation build up, then are suddenly pulled away, as on “Call the Power.” Moods change midway through a song, becoming more wilfully playful and surreal, as is the case of “Dance in Praise.”
Crucially, though, there’s also beauty coursing all the way through Of the Earth. As highlighted by the album’s best track, “Those of the Sky,” which incorporates everything new and old that Hutchings has in the locker (alongside some fabulous samples of bird calls), he has the ability to make you feel present—like your weary, attention-depleted brain has effortlessly locked in on something peaceful, potent, and quietly rather profound.
