Influences: James Brown Elvin Jones David Axelrod Sun Ra The Stark Reality The Feedback Joyride Good luck trying to categorize their music. Led by the relentless drummer Malcolm Catto, the UK collective's objective lays quite a ways beyond what ordinary listeners know or expect. In an alternative galaxy, where the orbits of Hip-Hop, Funk, Jazz, Psychedelic, Electronic, Avante-Garde and Ethnic music all revolve around “The One” – that's where you might find The Heliocentrics. Malcolm Catto – drums & piano Jake Ferguson – bass & Thai guitar Mike Burnham – modular synth & effects Jack Yglesias – flutes, percussion & santur Adrian Owusu – guitars, oud & percussion James Arben – clarinet, tenor & baritone sax Ray Carless – alto, tenor & baritone sax Max Weissenfeldt – vibes & percussion Khadijatou Silcott-Fraser (K2 Wordplay) - vocals Malcolm Catto leads the nine-piece Heliocentrics for a crazy, funked-up ride into the far reaches of jazz's space time continuum. I don't know what that means either, but it'd take up way too much space attempting to pin down The Heliocentrics sound. They didn't call it Out There for nothing. It sounds retro, like a James Brown outtake, but Catto's been spending the present-day diggin' deep for funk 45s, drumming for DJ Shadow and Madlib, and releasing a solo LP on James Lavelle's Mo' Wax Records (the "Untitled" track below is a sample of an unreleased song from those sessions). "Sirius B" is just 1/24 of the electro-free-jazz-space-out The Heliocentrics have unleashed on an unsuspecting and unworthy world.
last.fm