The Comet Is Coming, the London-based Mercury Prize nominated synth-sax-drum trio featuring DANALOGUE (Dan Leavers), SHABAKA (Shabaka Hutchings), and BETAMAX (Max Hallett), have released their second single “LUCID DREAMER,” a laid-back, warm, cerebral track from the band’s upcoming fourth studio album Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam, set for release September 23 via the legendary Impulse! Records.
Comet’s last single “CODE,” was a head-banger, which “smacks you in the face with a propulsive club beat, stabbing horns, and trace synths” (Stereogum). On “LUCID DREAMER,” Comet goes inward on a cerebral journey that sounds like floating on the rings of Saturn. Brooklyn Vegan, who premiered the track said, the song moves “into far-out, spacey, psychedelic territory that’s nearly impossible to categorize.”
Danalogue’s synths chirp and come to life, like something otherworldly being born, showcasing the band’s more vulnerable side. Indeed, the track features the introduction of an Ensoniq synth with a choir sound (its voicings echoing humans), Shabaka’s sax weaving like DNA through it all. “LUCID DREAMER” is a counter to the group’s typical unrelenting, driving muscle and unlike anything else in their catalog.
On their fourth album, Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam, The Comet Is Coming–synth magician/producer Danalogue, drummer-producer Betamax, and saxophonist/spiritual riffologist Shabaka–burn brightly, soundtracking our epoch of change in ways their contemporaries simply aren’t trying to.
The process: emerging straight from lockdown, the trio went to Peter Gabriel’s Real World decked out studio tucked away in the English countryside. With the help of the band’s longtime engineer Kristian Craig Robinson, the trio embarked on a four-day long recording process guided by collective intuition, sheer skill, and transcendent improvisation.
Next, Danalogue and Betamax fastidiously sampled the band’s own creations, alchemically weaving the out-of-body musical collisions with microscopic attention to detail in the production room. This distillation process yields a profound coherent musical message about the future of technology, humankind, spirituality, and the connectivity of the universe. Which just so happens to rock.