Formed 2005

The Heliocentrics are a London-based collective centred on drummer and producer Malcolm Catto, bassist Jake Ferguson and multi-instrumentalist Jack Yglesias, operating out of the Quatermass Sound Lab, their all-analogue recording studio in East London. Catto had appeared on Madlib's "Shades of Blue" in 2003 and DJ Shadow's "The Outsider" in 2006 before forming the Heliocentrics as a full ensemble in 2005, releasing the debut album "Out There" on Now-Again in 2007. The record drew from James Brown, Sun Ra, David Axelrod and musique concrète in roughly equal measure and established the group's approach: wide-ranging reference points, all-analogue recording, and a refusal to settle in any single genre. Their 2009 collaboration with Mulatu Astatke, the Ethiopian pianist and vibraphonist who had developed Ethio-jazz in the 1960s, produced "Inspiration Information" (Strut), which won Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Album of the Year. Further collaborations with Orlando Julius, Lloyd Miller and Melvin Van Peebles ran alongside the solo discography. Malcolm Catto produced Yusef Kamaal's "Black Focus" (2016), the debut of the duo behind the contemporary London jazz album of that year. Two albums on Madlib Invazion followed in 2020. The group remains active.