Nominated as the token 'wildcard' entry for this year's Mercury Prize, The Comet is Coming's debut album deserves, if not to win (Bowie's 'Blackstar' deserves to on its own merits rather than poignancy), then to achieve an awful lot of attention.
'Channel the Spirits' is an engrossing and captivating expression of energy and imagination on the part of the three London-based musicians who formed a loose improvisational trio and recorded the album in a matter of a few days.
The promiscuity with genres throughout the album is what drives the music on in an eclectic sense, allowing the tracks to melt into one another but at the same time move between psychedelic jazz, Afrobeat, electronica, tribal and funk.
The band have cited inspiration as being the cosmic jams of Sun Ra, but at times it sounds like a collision between the gritty bass grooves of Fuck Buttons and the blissed-out synths of old-school The Orb.
All the tracks though are scored through with acid saxophone attacks and flourishes that provide the album with its spaced-out, reverb-heavy vibrancy. 'New Age' embraces electronica to the extent that it doesn't sound far from Aphex Twin's debut 'Selected Ambient Works I', while 'Journey through the Asteroid Belt' harks back to bands like Harmonia.
In all, this is a piece of work that adds depth and colour with repeat listens, and which demonstrates a versatility and creative energy that can only mean following on the tail of this comet will be thoroughly rewarding.
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