Biography
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Years Active
2006 – present (18 years)
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Founded In
London, England, United Kingdom
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Members
- Adrian Owusu
- Jack Yglesias
- Jake Ferguson
- James Arben
- Malcolm Catto
The Heliocentrics is a London based music collective breaking boundaries between funk, rock, electronic, ethnic traditions, and experimental music.
The Heliocentrics’ debut album, Out There (2007) is a confounding piece of work. Drawing from the funk universe of James Brown, the disorienting asymmetry of Sun Ra, the cinematic scope of Ennio Morricone and the sublime fusion of David Axelrod, musique concrete, post-punk and krautrock, it pointed the way towards a new kind of psychedelia, one that could only come from many years of musical evolution and the refusal to conform to a single genre. The band’s collective drive is to find an individual voice, and they search for it in an alternate galaxy where the orbits of funk, jazz, psychedelic, electronic, avant-garde and “ethnic” music all revolve around “The One.”
Drummer Malcolm Catto, bassist Jake Ferguson and keyboard player Jack Yglesias are the three constants behind the UK ensemble. Equally musicians and music fans, they have been playing together for over a decade. Over the years, various contributors to the collective have come and gone such as jazz legend Ray Carless (tenor soprano saxophone), Mike Burnham (drums and oud), Max Weissenfeldt (drums and vibraphone). James Arben (various wind instruments) and Adrian Owusu. As of 2018, the core trio have been augmented with Barbora Patkova (vocals), Raven Bush (violin and effects), Dan Smith (guitar and Moog) and Jason Yarde (saxophone).
They have earned lifetime fans in the likes of Madlib (with whom Catto has collaborated on numerous Yesterdays New Quintet projects), DJ Shadow (both as a touring ensemble and in the studio), Quantic and Ethiopian jazz giant Mulatu Astatke, with whom The Heliocentrics recorded the 2009 album Inspiration Information 3. Collaborations with other Jazz legends followed such as the eponymous 2010 album Lloyd Miller & The Heliocentrics with Oriental Jazz multi-instrumentalist Lloyd Miller, and the 2014 albums "Jaiyede Afro" (with Nigerian saxophonist Orlando Julius), and "The Last Transmission" with American film maker and composer Melvin Van Peebles.
In between these four collaboration albums they released the 2013 album 13 Degrees of Reality, with which the collective returned to develop their vision of psychedelic funk, while exploring the possibilities created by their myriad influences – Latin, African, and more.
With the 2017 album A World Of Masks the band continued to expand its horizons with the addition of a new vocalist to the line up, the Slovak singer Barbora Patkova. That same year saw The Heliocentrics venturing into soundtrack territory when they created the music for the documentary The Sunshine Makers, detailing the adventures of two legendary underground LSD chemists from the 1960s. Their latest album Infinity Of Now was released in 2020 on Madlib's label Madlib Invazion.
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