Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

A cosmic swan song that leaves the stratosphere behind, Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam is The Comet Is Coming’s final studio transmission, and their most unrelentingly expansive. Released on 23 September 2022 via Impulse! Records, the album doesn’t just push boundaries; it vaporises them in a blast of synth-laced, sax-fuelled, intergalactic jazz.

This is the sound of a band untethered. From the opening pulse of “Code,” the trio channel pure propulsion. Danalogue’s synths squelch and shimmer like dark matter, Betamax’s drums snap like solar flares, and Shabaka’s saxophone streaks across the mix like a comet’s tail. The result is part psych-jazz freakout, part Afrofuturist rave, part cosmic ritual. And somehow, it’s also tight: a carefully controlled detonation of rhythm and texture.

Critics praised the album’s sheer scope. Exclaim! described it as “alien-firefly-weaving-through-the-sky” jazz, while The Skinny hailed its “shimmering inverted pedals” and “extraterrestrial adventures.” There’s a sense of urgency and imagination here that feels both grounded and mythic, like Sun Ra in a Blade Runner dreamscape. And for all its abstraction, the groove remains king.

With year-end nods from Mojo, Treble, Uncut, and DJ Mag, Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam secured its place as one of 2022’s most acclaimed releases. But more than accolades, it offered a final glimpse of a band whose vision was always about more than music—it was about world-building, imagination, and transcendence.

As a parting shot, Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam does exactly what its title promises. It doesn’t just expand the beam, it fractures it into prisms, blasting a signal back through space-time with one last glorious transmission.