The Comet is Coming is a London-based band that combines elements of jazz, electronica and funk with psychedelic rock. Their debut EP, Prophecy, was released on 12″ limited edition vinyl on 13/11/15. The full-length album Channel The Spirits followed on 1/04/2016. They have been signed to The Leaf Label. The members of the band go by the pseudonyms King Shabaka, Danalogue The Conquerer, and Betamax Killer. Betamax Killer, a member of the band, spoke to M (magazine) about the band’s origins: Me and Danalogue The Conqueror are a psychedelic electronic synths and live drums group called Soccer96. At some gigs, we noticed a tall shadowy figure. He appeared on the stage, holding his sax. It created an explosion of energy and stunned everyone when he got on stage to play with us. King Shabaka called me a few weeks later and asked me to record. We booked three days at Total Refreshment Centre studios. It all happened at an amazing speed. We recorded 1/4 inch tape without any pre-written material. We had hours of music recorded by the end of three days. The band’s imagery is based on outer space, science fiction, and B-movies. This can be seen in their music videos for “Neon Baby” u0026 “Do The Milky Way”, along with song titles and artwork. The Quietus premiered “Do The Milky Way”. The group was featured in The Guardian’s April 2016 feature. They were called the “true inheritors” of Sun Ra’s cosmic jazz pioneering spirit. They were praised for their “fusion between jazz, Afrobeat, and electronica in an intergalactic mashup.” The Quietus stated that, although they are “intrinsically connected to funk…and spiritually tied to all manners of cosmic music via imagery (and love for space-creating echo or reverb effects), The Comet is Coming has the feeling of an utterly new sort of project.” King Shabaka discusses the cosmic side of The Comet Is Coming and its connection to Sun Ra in the same article. He also describes the crystal that covers their Prophecy EP. He said, “The other thing about crystal, metaphorically speaking is the whole Sun Ra idea of creating your own myths. Sun Ra’s statement that societies can create their own mythological structures is something I enjoy a lot. You can decide what is real and false. You can create your own myth using wikipedia’s crystal in the hand.
