“This album came out of purely making music for myself,” Shabaka tells Apple Music. “I was producing tracks on my own while I was on the move and it took away the pressure to get it perfect. Instead, it’s about being as creative as possible and seeing where it takes me.” Since his emergence with the fierce double-drumming jazz group Sons Of Kemet in 2013, Shabaka has become one of Britain’s most distinct and recognizable saxophonists. MOBO Award-winning and Mercury Prize-nominated, Shabaka’s work has encompassed everything from full-throated West African polyrhythms to spiritual jazz, electro-fusion, and flute-based ambience. Following a brief hiatus from the saxophone to focus on his mastery of the ancient Japanese shakuhachi flute on 2024’s album Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, Shabaka now returns with another left turn: an entirely self-produced record of woodwinds, beatmaking, and his own rap verses. The resulting 12 tracks on Of the Earth are freewheeling and infectiously propulsive, ranging from the ethereal synth textures of “A Future Untold” to the lo-fi dance rhythms of “Ol’ Time African Gods,” the menacing lyricism of “Go Astray,” and the enveloping flute layering of “Step Lightly.” “After seeing someone like André 3000 have the audacity to play the flute and do something so creatively different in the public sphere, it gave me confidence to experiment too,” Shabaka says. “It’s been one of the most fun and freeing records I’ve made.” Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. “A Future Untold” “It feels like ambient music has been following me around over the past few years. I’m a big fan of people like Tim Hecker, and I’ve been putting bits of ambient music into my live sets between tracks as I wanted to get listeners into the dreamscape of that world. This entire record is me stepping into the dream of what I want music to be, and this song is its introduction.” “Those of the Sky” “I used to walk around for hours making chord progressions with this little Roland J-6 sequencer. I’d fill up the box and then have them on in the house on loop while I listened. After playing it in the background of my life, I’d start humming melodies, and one day, this tune emerged along with a counter-melody that came to me. I started playing the same chord progression during the live shows with my band for Perceive Its Beauty… and I loved its homely feel, like I was coming into something warm and encompassing. I decided to record it solo for this project and added a third counterpoint line, which makes it like a conversation where three people are speaking simultaneously but they can all understand each other.” “Go Astray” “This was the first track that I rapped on during the making of the album. The melody in the middle of it just came to me one day, and I built a beat around it and then realized it could do with my vocal. I had a little red notebook that I was writing constantly in, and I decided I didn’t want a linear narrative for this track, since there was a lot going on in the world at the time, and I wanted that to be reflected in what I was saying.” “Step Lightly” “A lot of the time when I’m practicing the flute, I’m just playing and letting my fingers move to guide the melodic contour. After doing that for an hour, unconscious melodies start to come out. If they’re worth something, they stick in my mind and I remember them. This is one that came out and that was foundational to me from that point. I then added a soca beat in the middle, which is a reference to my youth in the Caribbean where that music is everywhere. It’s wrapping up all sides of my musicality.” “Call the Power” “One of the big inspirations for the polyrhythmic percussion on the track is rara music from Haiti, where horn players each play a single tone, and then, when it all comes together, it’s a crazy wall of sound that the rhythm lives in. It’s bigger than any individual, and I find that is a good metaphor for society. It also sounds like a distorted guitar plays at the beginning here but it’s actually just the flutes going through an overdrive effect.” “Dance in Praise” “I was thinking about the fast tempos I used to play in Sons Of Kemet and was mourning how the flute family means you drop down to a slower rhythm. I wanted to subvert the obvious so I tried to make rhythms that reminded me of that feeling for this song, and then I let the rest flow from there. I wanted the track to evoke small sweaty clubs and that feeling of everyone moving together to a communal spirit.” “Ol’ Time African Gods” “This started way before I thought about making an album as I just came up with it on the Koala sampling app on my iPad and was vibing to it for ages. I forgot about it and then realized it was a tune that should be on the record. The dirtiness on the track might have been cleaned up if I had more experience as an engineer but punk and DIY is a thing, so if it makes your head bob then it’s fine. It doesn’t have to be pristine, it works as long as it makes you feel and dream.” “Marwa the Mountain” “I wanted this one to reference rara multihorn polyphony again and the Caribbean way of playing saxophone. When I started Sons Of Kemet, I was really trying to un-Americanize my sound. I realized I had my own personal history and tradition that was being erased by my desire to study jazz. I had to pull back and think about my own articulation or way of viewing swing and rhythm, and this is one of the results.” “Light the Way” “Most of the flutes on the album are multilayered with stacks for each melodic part, as I wanted it to sound like a choir of flutes that pull you into a swamp of sound where there’s no clear hierarchy of top-line melody or countermelody, it’s just a swarm. This track also has a kind of swing that I don’t think I could recreate again, since I was just experimenting and I realized I had it down perfectly. For some reason, it makes me think of London at night, it just has the same vibe.” “Stand Firm” “This started life as a slow, classical melody on the flute. Then, in a moment of inspiration, I decided to experiment with what would happen if I put this fast [Canadian breakcore pioneer] Venetian Snares-like beat on the front of it, and suddenly, it took a whole different turn. That change is one of the great things that can happen when you’re part of the production process, since when you’re in control you never know where things might go. It’s very exciting.” “Space Time” “This was a nod to J Dilla, who makes beats that might sound sloppy but that are still in the grid and really swing. He manages to make the time feel spacialized. I wanted the drums to switch in and out of the groove and the ambience holds together the whole rhythmic sway of it. It’s a bit like the specter of ambience from the first track, ‘A Future Untold,’ now reemerges.” “Eyes Lowered” “I think a lot about the arc and shape of albums and where I want things to end. I’m a fan of what I like to call optimistic melancholy, where we end on notes of mystery and potential. This track is something that makes you sit back and contemplate what’s happening and the meaning of what came before. The lyrics are once again just what was on my mind at the time. It’s all just a feeling.”