{"title":"The Heliocentrics","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eThe Heliocentrics exist somewhere between a band and a research project. Drummer and producer Malcolm Catto, bassist Jake Ferguson and multi-instrumentalist Jack Yglesias built the group around the Quatermass Sound Lab, their all-analogue recording studio in East London, and have used it since 2005 to make records that refuse to stay in any genre long enough to be categorised there. The debut \"Out There\" (Now-Again, 2007), drawing from James Brown's funk universe, Sun Ra's rhythmic disorientation, David Axelrod's cinematic scope and musique concrète, announced a band that had absorbed an implausible amount of music and was going to do something specific with it. The break that defined their reputation came in 2009 when Gilles Peterson brought them together with Mulatu Astatke, the Ethiopian pianist and vibraphonist who had invented Ethio-jazz in the 1960s alongside Duke Ellington arranger Richard Evans, and the resulting \"Inspiration Information\" (Strut) won Peterson's Worldwide Album of the Year. Working with Astatke clarified something about the group's approach: they are, at bottom, a rhythm section built for collaboration, disciplined enough to serve another musician's vision without losing their own identity. That sensibility has produced a discography of collaborations alongside the solo albums, working with Orlando Julius, Melvin Van Peebles, Lloyd Miller and, through Malcolm Catto's production work independently of the Heliocentrics name, Yusef Kamaal's \"Black Focus\" (2016). The Madlib connection is real: Catto appeared on Madlib's \"Shades of Blue\" in 2003, and the group later released two albums on Madlib Invazion. They remain active and based in London.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-heliocentrics-a-world-of-masks-2017-soundway-vinyl-lp","title":"The Heliocentrics - A World Of Masks (2017 Soundway Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Heliocentrics - \u003cem\u003eA World Of Masks\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP - 2017 Soundway (SNDWLP093)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Heliocentrics are a London band built around the drummer Malcolm Catto and the bassist Jake Ferguson, who have spent two decades making a dark, psychedelic strain of jazz-funk in their own studio, recording to tape for that thick analogue warmth. They take their name in the spirit of Sun Ra, and their music pulls in psych rock, library music, hip-hop and electronics as readily as jazz. They have backed everyone from the Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke to DJ Shadow. \u003cem\u003eA World of Masks\u003c\/em\u003e, from 2017, is one of their more song-shaped records, built around the Slovak singer Barbora Patkova, whose voice floats cool over the grooves on the title track and \"Human Zoo\". The band is fleshed out with horns and strings, and two guests from the London jazz scene sit in - Shabaka Hutchings on bass clarinet and Jason Yarde on baritone. It is cinematic and hypnotic, closer to a soundtrack than to a conventional jazz record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe record landed just as the London jazz scene was breaking into the wider world, and while the Heliocentrics sit slightly apart from that crowd, older, stranger and more rooted in psych and library music, they share its openness and its refusal to stay in one lane. It has become a favourite among crate-diggers and cosmic-jazz heads, the kind of record that turns up on plenty of shelves and rarely leaves them. This is the 2017 Soundway pressing, self-produced by Catto and Ferguson, on standard black vinyl.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Soundway","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44080385622075,"sku":null,"price":80.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/a1361389571_10.jpg?v=1788165819"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/the-heliocentrics.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}