Interview: The Heliocentrics

Back in the noughties a damn fine retro funk and rare groove outfit called Soul Destroyers bit the dust. Soon after their demise the band’s drummer Malcolm Cato and bass player Jake Ferguson appeared at the helm of a new collective. They were called The Heliocentrics and their music, while still funky, had a looser improvisational feel that recalled the great Sun Ra’s cosmological explorations from the late sixties.

Their 2007 debut album Out There led to a collaboration with Ethiopiques founder member, vibraphone player Mulatu Astatke, and the subsequent ‘rediscovery’ of US world music jazz mystic Lloyd Miller. Other collaborations have happened with DJ Shadow and veteran afrobeat sax player Orlando Julius; a continuing roster of musical quality that has found something special in The Heliocentrics sound.

This year saw the release of their eighth album, A World of Masks, as well as an original soundtrack for the psychedelic documentary film The Sunshine and thanks to local promoters Worm Disco Club, the band will be visiting Bristol’s Kuumba Centre on Saturday November 11.

We caught up with Malcolm Kato for a quick chat ahead of the show:

The Heliocentrics emerged from your previous band Soul Destroyers, was it your own project that others joined in with or was it a collective from the start?

Me and Jake both started The Heliocentrics after The Soul Destroyers naturally imploded. We wanted to do something that incorporated our influences other than just late sixties Funk 45’s, such as psych, krautrock, library, musique concrete, modal jazz and hip-hop. We started by recording live bass and drum tracks together and then overdubbing all sorts of weird records on top of them. After a while fellow ex Soul Destroyers Ade Owusu (guitar), and Jack Yglesias (percussion), started playing and recording with us and by the time of our first gig a year or so later we had accumulated a sixteen piece band which included musical saw, sitar and vibes.

Did you have a musical manifesto or concept for the band from the outset? If so, what was it and how has it changed over the ten years the band has been developing?

It was pretty straight forward with the Soul Destroyers as there was a single aim, purpose and set of inspirations. Whereas our approach with The Heliocentrics has always been to let everyone bring their own thing to the table along with their own personal set of influences. That way everybody has a musical voice and is part the creative process. Since the band’s conception we have mainly been improvising in order to get away from traditional song structures and because of our mutual love of spontaneously created music and sounds. But nowadays we enjoy playing and writing more structured tracks and songs alongside any improvised stuff.

Ethiofunk legend Mulatu Astatke

You’ve hooked up with some amazing musicians right from the start, how did you connect with Mulatu Astatke, Lloyd Miller and Orlando Julius? 

The Mulatu collaboration came about through radio producer Karen P who put on the first Mulatu concert in the UK in many years. She heard Out There our first album and thought we could do a decent job of backing Mulatu. The show went well so we asked him about doing a collaborative LP, which he enthusiastically agreed to, and the Strutt label made it possible. Then specialist record dealer and label boss Jazzman Gerald introduced us to Lloyd Miller and we recorded a 12” for Jazzman Records and saw how talented he was although sometimes maybe not the easiest to work with. But ended up managing to record an LP with him for Strut records label owner Quinton Scott, who subsequently approached us to work with Orlando Julius.

What did you learn from working with them?

We have learnt so much at so many levels from working with each collaborative artist that I cannot even begin to expand about it now.

So how important is it that you work through an analogue studio and what does that bring to your sound?

Our vintage analogue studio set up enables us to get a sound we feel enhances and is sympathetic to the music we create. For us the sound is as important as the music itself. Here at Quatermass we are never time watching any session for ourselves or other bands I record, and in fact we don’t have any clocks, as we know that worrying about time kills creativity.

Your latest album, A World of Masks, seems particularly to explore distinctive textures of sound for each number, is this something planned or what emerges through improvisation?

A lot of the production is done after the recording and sometimes only the drums organ and vocals have made it onto the finished version.We also have a wide palette of influences and references and hopefully between us musically can cover a few styles. We also never stick with only one production sound for any album. Each track has its own character and needs different treatment and I think it is lazy to have the same sound on a whole album, as today’s ears tend to be restless and get bored easy.

Heliocentric vocalist Barbora Patkova

You have yet another amazing collaborator in vocalist Barbora Patkova. When did she become involved with the album and will she be performing with you in Bristol?

Yes, Babs will be there, she is our singer and is a permanent feature of the band. We met through a mutual friend about three years ago, after searching high and low for donkeys years for someone who could improvise vocals over what we did as well as having a great and intriguing voice. It happened that Babs was living just down the road from my house at the time we were introduced to her.

Who writes the lyrics for the songs on the album?

Babs writes the lyrics and she has amassed a multitude of them over the years.

When you perform the music from A World of Masks how much is fresh improvisation and how closely do you stick to the recorded versions?

The way we play tracks varies from night to night depending on the varying factors that can affect any performance, like how the band’s feeling, the atmosphere, the crowd reaction and the monitoring etc. The same goes for any improvisational tracks we might do.

Judging by past form you must be working on the next Heliocentrics project already, any clues about future direction or collaboration?

We are currently working on a couple of projects including material for another album with Babs.

The Heliocentrics perform at Worm Disco Club at Kuumba Bristol on Saturday November 11.

You can hear A World of Masks on Bandcamp.