Shabaka Hutchings to Release New Solo LP

The guest-heavy Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace due April 12th via Impulse! Records

February 28, 2024February 29, 2024 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2024, Brandee Younger, Carlos Niño, Elucid, esperanza spalding, Floating Points, Impulse! Records, Jason Moran, Laraaji, Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Moses Sumney, Nasheet Waits, Perceive Its Beauty Acknowledge Its Grace, Saul Williams, Shabaka, Shabaka Hutchings

Powerhouse British jazz musician Shabaka Hutchings is reintroducing himself as the singularly named Shabaka for his debut full-length as a solo artist, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace.

The album, which comes out on April 12th via Impulse! Records, finds the musician replacing his signature saxophone for an array of woodwinds, seeming to take a cue from André 3000. In fact, the OutKast rapper is one of a plethora of guests recruited to assist Shabaka across these 11 new compositions, including Moses Sumney, Esperanza Spalding, Floating Points, Brandee Younger, Laraaji, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Saul Williams and rapper Elucid.

You can find the tracklist below, along with the Phoebe Boswell–directed video for “End of Innocence,” which finds Shabaka playing clarinet alongside Jason Moran, Nasheet Waits and Carlos Niño.

It’s been two years since Shabaka pulled the plug on his longtime group Sons of Kemet and a year since retiring from saxophone. He admits this new material “really signifies a departure for me, a departure from the bands that I’ve become known for playing in, and the arrival of the flutes in general. I bring a lot of flutes to the album and explore different kinds of sonic terrains… It’s my first instrument, the instrument that I consider to be my primary instrument, so it’s really going back to what I feel most comfortable with.”

Shabaka Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace, Impulse! Records 2024

He added that he started playing one particular flute, the ancient Japanese Shakuhachi, during the early stages of the pandemic in 2020.

“Since then, it has slowly changed the scope of my musical inner landscape and drawn me towards a multitude of other instruments in the flute family,” he explains. “As more flutes have been added to my arsenal including Mayan Teotihuacan drone flutes, Brazilian Pifanos, Native American flutes and South American Quenas, I’ve started to appreciate the underlying principles that cause these instruments to resonate most fully and use this understanding to form a concept allowing me to freely move between instruments.”

Having such a large cast of friends and colleagues to collaborate with on Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace is also a great point of pride for Shabaka as he anticipates its impending release, which follows his initial foray into solo waters with 2022’s Afrikan Culture EP,

“I invited a bunch of musicians I’ve met and admired over the past few years of touring throughout the United States to collaborate and everyone said yes, which I constantly find breathtaking,” he disclosed. His goal was to bring everyone into the legendary Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, a space he admits “informed the sound of so many seminal jazz albums that have shaped my musical aptitude. We played with no headphones or separation in the room so we could capture the atmosphere of simply playing together in the space without a technological intermediary.”

Shabaka is playing select dates in support of Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace, which you can find below.

Pre-order the album here.

Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace Tracklist: