Trust in the cosmos, that’s the “thesis statement” behind this album
In some ways The Last Transmission feels as much a step back in time for Catto and the band as it is a step forward: a step back in that it goes right back to the group at their most thundering, bombed out, and--dare I say--celestial.
The Heliocentrics of Lloyd Miller and the Heliocentrics couldn’t have made this album. If the band even attempted before this point it probably would counted as an interesting near miss. Up until this point, The Heliocentrics struggled to find their niche in collaboration, either giving too much ground to statesmen, or shambling along in a game of musical twister over how to distribute the work: simply put the chops weren’t there. But with The Last Transmission, here they are, with contribution from wizened sage Melvin Van Peebles--the luminary, known just as much for his own string of albums with Breh soul in 1968, as he is for his score for Sweet Sweetback’s badassss song, famously recorded with a pre-fame Earth Wind & Fire.
It feels like there’s an ever present fog on this album, dense enough that it feels heavy on the listener, yet, in its quieter moments, light enough that it has an aimless free falling quality, emergent as narrative gets stranger and less connected to anything physical. In some ways it feels like a step back in time to the group's 2007 debut Out There. “The Cavern '', one of the standouts on the album,is a perfect example: while more subdued than some of the other songs on the album, it feels like it’s trying to cut through and find its own direction amongst the space.
“Transformation(parts 1 & 2)”, while merely part of an overall painting, deserve to be mentioned in their own right, with the former showcasing some watery guitar, blasts of feedback, and what sounds like Catto banging on an old steel kettle to to feverish anxious metamorphosis of our narrator as he turns into a sentient gas. Part 2 is just as strange and just as good, with its shuffling groove and slinky bassline in another lifetime would be fantastic car cruising music: the light tap of bongo and ‘50s science fiction sound effects whilst thundering and clattering exude a feeling of confidence it might seem dissonant and disconnected but you can tell this was all done with imagination and precision behind it.
The overall theme of the album might be more universal compared to Peebles’ more acerbic works from decades past like Watermelon Man, and maybe not as dark as say "A Birth Certificate Ain't Nothing but a Death Warrant Anyway" off 1974’s “What the….you mean i Can’t Sing”,but Peebles’ doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody. He’s proven that he can tackle a wide range of subjects through an equally wide array of lenses and emotions, always with an anarchic sense of humor that other directors of his era lacked.
Of all four collaboration albums this is probably the shortest in terms of length, and yet it doesn’t lose any of its potency. This is a strange,conceptual album that captures the best of the Heliocentrics ambition and composition skills and Van Peebles’ humor and poignancy.