About
London-based The Heliocentrics have long stirred a bewitching brew of funk, jazz, psych and library influences.
The Heliocentrics albums are all confounding pieces of work. Drawing equally from the funk universe of James Brown, the disorienting asymmetry of Sun Ra, the cinematic scope of Ennio Morricone, the sublime fusion of David Axelrod, Pierre Henry’s turned-on musique concrete, and Can’s beat heavy Krautrock, they have – regardless of the label on which they’ve release their music – pointed the way towards a brand new kind of psychedelia, one that could only from a band of accomplished musicians who were also obsessive music fans.
Drummer Malcolm Catto and bassist Jake Ferguson are The Heliocentrics masterminds and producers. They are obsessive weirdos in today’s musical climate, searching, progressive humans who tread their own path.
They have been playing together for nearly two decades and their collective drive is to find an individual voice. The Heliocentrics search for it in an alternate galaxy where the orbits of funk, jazz, psychedelia, electronic, avant-garde and “ethnic” music all revolve around “The One”!
Their 2007 debut album taking you ‘Out There’, described as “a funk-jazz continuum letting imaginations turn a dark corner”, laid the foundations for their 2009 magnum opus ‘Inspiration Information’ alongside Ethiopian musical legend Mulatu Astatke.
Held in the highest esteem, ‘Inspiration Information’ was Gilles Peterson’s ‘Worldwide Album of the Year’ andwas later recommended by Jamie Cullum as one of ‘Five Essential Jazz Albums’ to wrap your ears around.
After three more Now-Again albums and a vital alignment with afrobeat originator Orlando Julius, 2017 saw the release of ‘A World of Masks’ with vocals by Barbora Patkova, and ‘The Sunshine Makers’ OST, a score they wrote for the 2015 British documentary of the same name, directed by Cosmo Feilding-Mellen.
Their bar always set prodigiously high, The Heliocentrics have played with a huge number of influential and diverse artists, from Marshall Allen and the Arkestra, Archie Shepp and The Gaslamp Killer, to Pharoahe Monch, Cut Chemist and Kareem Riggins.
Labeled by Pitchfork as “a live-band culmination of every obsessive hip-hop-era producer’s drive to fall deeper into a rabbit hole of the previously unheard”, the band’s far-reaching influence meant a natural knock-on in being cited by hip-hop royalty: namely, featuring on DJ Shadow’s ‘Skullfuckery’, from 2006’s ‘The Outsider’ LP, and being sampled by Nas and Kanye West on the track ‘Everything’, featured on 2018’s ‘Nasir’ album.
With their songs featured in films such as ‘Relay’ starring Riz Ahmed and Lily James – Made Of The Sun & and sampled by Logic in his song ‘Bleed It’, The Heliocentrics continue to spread their influence far and wide.
The Heliocentrics released their last two LPs on Madlib’s Invazion, ‘Infinity of Now’ and ‘Telemetric Sounds’ in 2020. They released a new psychedelic collaboration with The Gaslamp Killer, ‘Legna’ in May 23 and looking forward to the release of their Record Store Day EP with Bilal plus Marshall Allen & Knoel Scott from Sun Ra Arkestra in April 2026.
