From the drummer sampled by Madlib
and Yesterdays New Quintet... From the band that backed DJ Shadow...
“Malcolm Catto’s band turns traditional funk on its head
with his syncopated drums tying up ’60s psychedelia and free
jazz into chaos-on-the-one.” – URB Magazine
Four years in the making, The Heliocentrics' debut album is finally
complete. Out There is here.
Good luck trying to categorize their music. Led by the relentless
drummer Malcolm Catto, the UK collective's objective lays quite a
ways beyond what ordinary listeners know or expect. In an alternative
galaxy, where the orbits of Hip-Hop, Funk, Jazz, Psychedelic, Electronic,
Avante-Garde and Ethnic music all revolve around “The One”
– that's where you might find The Heliocentrics.
A listen to a song or two reveals no small influence from the funk
universe of James Brown. But there's also the disorienting asymmetry
of Sun Ra's music. The cinematic scope of Ennio Morricone. The sublime
fusion of David Axelrod. But the Heliocentrics' music isn't retro.
It's brand new. And it's timeless. They have well-placed fans in 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), who will tell you that this band is
really the next shit but that they have the consistency and musicianship
that seems to have been lost somewhere in the analog to digital shuffle
over the past thirty years.