SONS OF KEMET | LIVE REVIEW
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Sat 27 Oct
Most clued-up musos know that every Mercury Prize shortlist always contains just the one token jazz album, and so it was that this year’s featured Sons Of Kemet’s third album. Instead of being there to pander to the niche audience, the quartet of Kemets blew the Mercury audience away, prompting bopping in the aisles and an unbridled standing ovation.
The Mercury can often tip a jazz act closer to the mainstream, but as good as previous nominees Gogo Penguin and Polar Bear are (the latter’s bandleader, Seb Rochford, is a former Sons Of Kemet drummer), none of them came quite so close to winning the main prize, and none are capitalising quite as well as this foursome, led by the tireless and acrobatic pipes of Shabaka Hutchings, on this sell-out UK tour.
Support act Lunch Money start off at earsplitting volume, and at the more challenging end of jazz, before mutating into a pleasing blend of jazzy drum’n’bass. They’ve not vacated the stage for long before Sons Of Kemet stride out with a subtle start, most likely The Book Of Disquiet or Song For Galeano from debut LP Burn. They then launch into a 20-minute blitzkreig of four or five songs – all blending into one another, with no pauses between and powered by the twin drummers. Waistcoasted Tom Skinner and dreadlocked Eddie Hick crack out rimshots, Afro-Cuban interlocked beats and frantic drum’n’bass.
Bandleader Hutchings commands the stage with his floppy Bill & Ben hat, shuffling feet marching on the spot and aorta throbbing, as he blasts through the sax, with Eastern scales bubbling away in a West Indian melting pot, working up a fine sweat. Fellow brass player Theon Cross is all ice on the tuba, barely perspiring for most of the set, ventilated by a string vest, and only removing his fedora towards the third act.
Many tunes are drawn from the triumphant Your Queen Is A Reptile, which is likely to see them break into most album of the year lists. A quality album is elevated into a fiercely funky proposition with Cross’ tuba anchoring the free rein of the sax – sometimes New Orleans parping, often shredding sub-bass, sometimes mimicking the Roland 303 and occasionally a didgeridoo. At one point Cross gets his own solo, moving from bass notes to a Ring The Alarm skit then into a bit of brass beatboxing.
It’s the blend of ska, dub, carnival irresistibility, intellect and righteous wailing that makes Sons Of Kemet a blistering proposition, and had the Clwb Ifor dancefloor literally bouncing around in hysteria.
words CHRIS SEAL