Wax Poetics Fall 2007

In the early part of the sixteenth century, a Polish astronomer by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus flipped the prevailing view of the universe on its head by claiming that our solar system revolved around the sun rather than the earth. His idea was known as heliocentrism, and at first nobody believed him. Almost five hundred years later, there is another great shift at hand, one where the sampler-driven genres of hip-hop and nu-jazz are taken back by the flourishing sensibilities of a live band and then mashed into an overflowing pot of musical stone soup flavored liberally with free jazz, psychedelic rock, and funk, to name just a few.

The goal of the Heliocentrics is, according to drummer Malcolm Catto, "a return back to something more humanoid, like the intricacies of a group of musicians communicating together and the subtlety of a living, breathing rhythm section, rather than have the musical straightjacket of quantizing or two-bar loops."

With their mission to turn back the clocks to a time when music was made by relating to others rather than sitting alone in the glow of a computer screen, it's clear that these aren't some musical new-jacks who think they can buck conventional wisdom with youthful idealism and vigor. The Heliocentrics' rhythm section, consisting of Catto, bassist Jake Ferguson, and guitarist Ade Owusu, were all members of the U.K.-based throwback group the Soul Destroyers and have been working together for more than a decade, "in which time we have probably been through more keyboard players than Spinal Tap has had drummers," Catto jokes. The rest of the group sports an equally impressive résumé, with players hailing from groups like NESTA, Popcorn Bubblefish, and the Poets of Rhythm, and with some live experience gigging alongside Quantic and DJ Shadow.

With dues paid playing in acts squarely rooted in the traditions of funk and soul, the Heliocentrics are now looking to explore some uncharted waters. "Though fun and great for getting our chops together, we soon got fed up with any strict musical genres along with the clique scenes and attitudes that go with them," Catto explains. "We have not, since the Soul Destroyers, tried to recreate a certain sound or musical style, but instead combine all our influences together to come up with our own musical identity and something hopefully unique."

While "genre-defying" has become a bit of a cliché lately, it is one of the few adjectives that can be used aptly to describe the group's far-reaching musical product, a collection of jazz- and funk-soaked grooves that has been schooled by the catalogs of Ennio Morricone and David Axelrod: it is fusion on an epic scale. Over the last four years, the time it has taken the group to conceptualize and complete their debut, Out There, the group has been listening to everything from Sun Ra and the Silver Apples to Broadcast and King Tubby. "As a musician, I think you generally do soak up what you listen to and subconsciously re-assimilate it and encompass it into your own style, meaning that in some ways, you really can't help but be influenced by what you listen to," says Catto.

While Out There may be another appropriate description of the Heliocentrics' sound, for Catto, it is an also an expression of their being a live group who performs in a space rather than digital circuitry, but who also strive to transcend that space: "Whereas some of our material has a definite feeling of a real space – you can picture us in a room playing – other material has a more abstract feeling in that you can't picture where or how the music is being played. That's probably the two main facets of the Heliocentric sound – rootsy playing styles mixed with spacey psychedelic production techniques."