The genius of Malcolm Catto and Jake Ferguson is slowly getting around. There’s no other way to say it. For a long time the two and their ensemble The Heliocentrics remained unnoticed, despite critical acclaim and the active support of fellow musicians like Madlib. In order to change this, Madlib is now taking care of the matter and promoting and releasing the new album on his label Madlib Invazions. This is only appropriate, after all, The Heliocentrics have only ever cooperated with the big names in the business; they have already released albums with highlife/afrobeat legend Orlando Julius, with the godfather of ethio-jazz Mulatku Astatke and with Melvin Van Peebles. The big breakthrough (also musically) came in 2017 with »A World Of Masks« on Soundway. With Barbora Patkova they had a female singer on board then. This special mixture created a completely new quality; never before had they been closer to their great idol Sun Ra and his Arkestra. Similar to the master of this sound spectrum of jazz, ethno, funk and psychedelic, they entered other spheres. And it is precisely the psychedelic nature of the music that is again being explored extensively. Because »Infinity Of Now« puts a few more coals into the psych fire; one could almost think that weed was invented for this record. The rhythm section, which is lead by the two heads Catto (drums) and Ferguson (bass), offers the syntactic bed on which this time mainly guitar and organ can and may spread out. That’s seldomly pleasing, »Nonsense (Slow Comp)« is for example a disruptive bad trip, which can surely knock the socks off of non-established people. But all in all, you are allowed to paint the bad, because the trip is mostly deep, fine, marked by small accents, carried by repetitions and loops. A real synapse killer, high voltage jazz, a journey to the centre of your own being!
Melos Kalpa
Melos Kalpa
Hands In The Dark