Shabaka Hutchings has announced his debut solo LP under the alias Shabaka. Realizing its beauty, and acknowledging its gracecontinuing in 2022 African culture EP, scheduled for release on April 12 via Impulse!. It finds Hutchings focusing primarily on flutes and softer woodwinds, with contributions from André 3000, Esperanza Spalding, Moses Sumney, Brandee Younger, Floating Points, Laraaji, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Saul Williams, Elucid, and more. To accompany the announcement, Hutchings shared a Phoebe Boswell-directed video for the lead single, “End of Innocence,” which you can watch below.
“End of Innocence”, and the album more broadly, “really represents a departure for me, a departure from the bands I've been known to play in, and the arrival of the Psalms in general,” Hutchings explained. “He brought a lot of flutes to the album and explored different kinds of sonic terrain, although for this song in particular, it's not actually a flute, it's a clarinet. It's my first instrument, and it's the instrument I consider my primary instrument, so it really goes back to What I feel most comfortable with.
Speaking about the collaborative process behind the LP, Hutchings shared: “I invited a bunch of musicians I've met and admired over the past few years from touring around the US to collaborate and everyone said yes, which I always find amazing,” he revealed. . The musicians gathered at the historic Rudy Van Gelder Studios, which “provided the sound of many seminal jazz albums that shaped my musical vocation. We played without headphones or separation in the room so that we could capture the atmosphere of playing together in the space without a technological intermediary.”
Hutchings added: “About releasing the Grid and Grandparents album We were sent here by history, I coined the term “sound poems” to express how I intend the listener to relate to the words associated with the sounds on the disc. Each title on this disc is extracted from a longer poem written specifically for the album and which only achieves its full meaning in the presence of music.
Realize its beauty and acknowledge its grace Cover artwork:
Realize its beauty and acknowledge its grace Song list:
1. The end of innocence
2. With the collapse of planets and stars
3. Insecurity
4. Controlling my breath, what fear has become
5. The wounded need to be replenished
6. The body is for habitation
7. I will do whatever you want
8. Living
9. Breathing
10. Kiss me before I forget
11. Song of the Motherland
