Now more than ever, the easiest answer to that pesky question — what’s keeping jazz vital these days? — appears to lie in London. And much of the serious activity there runs through Shabaka Hutchings. The 33-year-old tenor saxophonist anchors a handful of his own bands and served as the musical director for “We Out Here,” a Brownswood Recordings compilation with tracks from nine British groups, like a book of hours for the thriving young scene.

In January Mr. Hutchings announced that he had signed with Impulse!, an imprint of Universal, and that the label would be releasing music from his various ensembles. The first to arrive is “Your Queen Is a Reptile,” the third album by his quartet, Sons of Kemet, and it’s an excellent place to start.

Image “Your Queen Is a Reptile” is Sons of Kemet’s third album. Credit...

This band has a rare instrumentation — tenor saxophone, tuba, two drummers — and a relentless, jouncing sound anchored in rhythms of the Caribbean. His two other major projects are Shabaka and the Ancestors, a collaboration with young South African musicians that has a forbearing, serious mission, and the Comet Is Coming, an astro-futurist trio influenced by electronic dance music. Sons of Kemet’s sound falls somewhere right between those two: It’s acoustic music, but adamant and dance-driven.