Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Heliocentrics - Winter Song


Good luck trying to categorize The Heliocentrics' music. Led by the relentless drummer Malcolm Catto, the UK collective's reside musically in an alternative galaxy, where the orbits of Hip-Hop, Funk, Jazz, Psychedelic, Electronic, Avante-Garde and Ethnic music all collide.

A listen to Winter Song reveals no small influence from the funk universe of James Brown but there's also the disorienting asymmetry found in the music of the number one cosmic brother, Sun Ra. Throw in the cinematic scope of Ennio Morricone and the sublime fusion of David Axelrod and you have a new form of music that transcends boundaries and rips up the rule book and starts again. The Heliocentrics' music is by no means retro, it's brand new. With well-placed fans such as the likes of Madlib, Catto was featured on his Shades of Blue album and on various Yesterdays New Quintet releases, and DJ Shadow, the band backed him on the song This Time I’m Gonna Do It My Way from his The Outsider album, this is a band that has the consistency and musicianship that seems to have been lost somewhere in the analog to digital shuffle over the past thirty years. Buy their album Out There immediately, press play, turn the volume up to 11 and take a large drink of their timeless excellence.

The Heliocentrics - Winter Song

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