Pulled Apart At Lightspeed: Heliocentrics Collab Albums Part 1

by nomatrix12

The Heliocentrics occupy a singular place in the British jazz landscape, one that is emblematic of current stylings and experimentations going on within the scene: boldly combining jazz with dancehall, grime, afrobeat and rave music, but at the same time divorced from it.

 While they might mine from the same well of influences as say Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia, it’s clear that the band—led by drummer/producer Malcolm Catto and bassist Jake Furgeson—are taking from an older well of influences compared to the musicians previously mentioned. From 2009 to 2014 the group put out 4 albums that saw them collaborating with musical icons from wildly different fields, crossing different parts of the globe, and if you ask me to varying degrees of success. Each collaboration—regardless of whether it fully works or not—is emblematic of this level of experimentation with global sounds that would not only define British jazz, but also what separates it and makes it totally unique from its American counterparts.

 Heliocentrics first three collaborations were issued on Strut Records, a label known for their reissues of soul, jazz, and highlife music—occasionally the label veers into the present, issuing records from Sean Kuti and the Marshall Allen led Sun Ra Arkestra. Their first collaboration is with Mulatu Astatke, credited as being the creator of “Ethio-jazz” a sound unto itself that marries the scales and tones often found in traditional Ethiopian music, and incorporates them into the sensual tones of jazz.

 The way in which the two parties got together was more naturalistic than some would expect given the magnitude of this meeting of two minds. Before the Their first collaboration goes back to 2008 when the band was asked to back up Astatke at a show in London’s CARGO club. In 1998 Parisian label Buda Musique put out the compilation Éthiopiques Volume 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale, 1969–1974”, which served as the introduction of Astake’s musical tone to an international audience. By the mid-2000s Astatke was experiencing a kind of career resurgence in the west that up until that point he had never really experienced before. Seven of his songs were used as part of the score for Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, a perfect melding of dense and obscure music, and a director with an abiding interest in the “exotic” and a fascination with the off-the-beaten-path aspects of Americana. Around this time Astake’s music was also being sampled by the likes of DJ Cut Chemist and Nas & Damien Marley.

In some ways Inspiration Information 3 feels like a more hands on version of Bill Laswell’s Panthalassa (Laswell’s much lauded remix album of truncated 70’s era Miles Davis that came out when many of the post rock bands of the era began looking back with exalted adoration of the period) , both in regards to Astatke’s direct involvement in the making of the album, but also in the sense that all the choices made on the album feel both an attempt to add something new to Astatke’s sound, and to introduce him to an audience who either haven’t heard of him or Ethio-jazz in the first place. 

The overall sound is something much more idiosyncratic, coming across like an Ethio-jazz album approached through a hip hop inspired framework. The drums onAddis Black Widowfeel reminiscent of DJ Premier's flip of The Skull Snaps’ It’s a New Day on Gangstarr’s Take it Personal:taking the loping funk groove and emphasizing the kicks into something altogether more intense. The first song on the albumMasenqo is the only one that contains vocals, and while they initially sound out of key with the arrangement of the song, they have an earworm quality that finds a way into the listeners head. It’s a slow burner of an introduction with cascading piano and occasionally violins interjecting into the arrangement, but it all fits together and is never out of place. Overall, it bears resemblance to the efforts of rap producers like RZA and J Dilla, who built their reputations as producers by putting together beats that sounded as though they were put together by instinct and feeling rather than aiming for any technical prowess: what at first would sound bent out of shape would soon reveal itself to be part of something greater and weirder overall.

Judged on its own merits I feel the album can be daring and infectious, but it's best looked at as an introduction to Astatke’s music, and the wider range of Ethio-jazz, rather than a fully formed representation of the genre. It might interest people who want to go further to check out Hailu Mergia, a contemporary of Astatke. His 1985 album Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument manages to sound both ancient and futuristic at the same time. Depending on the listener, you could take these changes as a case of adding one too many eggs in the same basket, or as a venture that sought to challenge a well-established and rounded sound that has yet to be replicated.

Over the next 5 years Heliocentrics would take this daring and chameleonic approach to their other collaborations and while this album was only the starting point, it's a striking starting point at that that rewards on repeated listens.