Premiere: The Video For Sons Of Kemet's "Play Mass" Is A Jazz-Fueled Trip

Laid-back, hazy jazz and mind-bending visuals.

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Sons Of Kemet have just shared the video for their new "Play Mass" single, and it is disarmingly dreamlike. The laid-back, hazy jazz acts as a hypnotising soundtrack to the mounting surrealism that unfolds on-screen. Spots of distortion flare up across the picture like glitches in the matrix as our protagonist runs through a forest, at first with purpose, before being stopped in his tracks by the jarring images of a series of gold, faceless figures, each with slightly frightening masks than the one before. Gradually, the surrealism and the intensity of the music reach their crescendo, as our hero continues his journey through the greyscale urban sprawl.

It's an enticing and fantastical look at the band's Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do, an album that band-leader, composer and sax and clarinet player Shabaka Hutchings​ describes as "a meditation on the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain."​ However, there's more to the album than that with its musings on literature, science fiction and even the Middle East crisis, as well as its deep connection to fife music from New Orleans, West African culture and Western military band music.​ Sons Of Kemet's music is as complex and intricate as the heritage that influenced it.

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