If you’ve been following the excellent Ethiopiques series that documents the golden years (from about 1968 – 74) of Ethiopian music, the name Mulatu Astatke would no doubt be familiar to you. His vibraphone, conga and various other percussion playing can be heard throughout the series, though he is also a composer, arranger, and bandleader in his own right, coining the term Ethio – Jazz to describe his unique fusion of jazz, funk, latin and African rhythms. He’s played with Duke Ellington, even had his music in the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers.
Now Strut have hooked him up with the Helliocentrics, who are a bit like a UK version of our Bamboos, a backwards looking forward thinking 7 piece funk jazz soul, break-beat collective. They’ve backed up DJ Shadow, were sampled by Madlib and their DJ inspired interest in cranking out their own version of rare groove is undeniable. In short it’s an incredibly apt pairing as the Helliocentrics have the sense of history, not to mention the skills to really project Astatke’s music out to a whole new level.
The first thing you notice is how taut and punchy the band is. Part of the charm of Astatke’s music, of his arranging and playing was that it felt fragile and somewhat naive, like the band were doing such amazing trance inducing things that it could fall apart at any moment – yet somehow it all just managed to stick together. This is not the case here, there’s a real precision to the playing, not to mention great production. Again part of the charm of Ethiopiques series were the scratchy recordings, yet by abstaining from copious amounts of reverb and really focussing on differentiating between the textures of the instruments this album really comes across as Astatke’s music updated for 2009.
The mostly instrumental tracks here build slowly a truly amazing mix of jazz, psychedelia and funk music, saxophones snaking around, piano guitar, impossibly funky bass riffs and of course the relentless percussion. Aside from the great arrangements what grabs you are little things, the careful attention to detail such as the outlandishly fuzzed guitars on the opener Masengo, faraway vocals in Live From Tigre Lounge or the illest keys you will ever hear on Phantom of Panter. It’s a curious fusion, and whilst the Heliocentrics seem to have exerted the most control, there’s often just a little vibes run or a little burst of traditional instrumentation that just sends everything in a whole new direction. An inspired merging of words.
Bob Baker Fish
