Sons of Kemet: Your Queen Is a Reptile (2LP) [IMPULSE]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set spreads the album across four sides in a gatefold jacket, with a download code tucked inside. It was nominated for the 2018 Mercury Prize and topped The Wire magazine's annual critics' poll as record of the year.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Gatefold jacket
• Download card included

About the album

Most jazz bands get by with one drummer. Sons of Kemet run two, Seb Rochford and Tom Skinner, and put a tuba where the bass would normally go, so the London quartet hits more like a carnival parade than a club set. Shabaka Hutchings wrote every tune and leads on saxophone, with Theon Cross pushing the low end on tuba.

Each track is named for a woman Hutchings admires, starting close to home with "My Queen Is Ada Eastman," his Barbadian great-grandmother, and moving through "My Queen Is Harriet Tubman," "My Queen Is Angela Davis" and "My Queen Is Doreen Lawrence." Toaster Congo Natty and poet Josh Idehen step in on vocals, and the band recorded most of it at Total Refreshment Centre in Hackney, with producer Dilip Harris helping keep all that rhythm in focus. Every track title follows the same pattern, so the tracklist reads like a roll call of heroes.

It runs nearly 56 minutes, their longest record, and it never sits still. Two drummers and a tuba is a lot of band for one living room, but the neighbours will come round to it eventually.

Also at Kops: more Sons of Kemet on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Impulse! (cat# B0027970-01), the 2018 album.