The Heliocentrics Vinyl, CD & tapes by The Heliocentrics at Norman Records

The Heliocentrics draw on a combination of James Brown, Sun Ra, Ennio Morricone,David Axelrod, Pierre Henry and Can to make their powerful and epic, expansive, psychedelic funk. Their latest album Infinity of Now is released on Madlib Invazion, the label owned by one-of-a-kind hip-hop producer Madlib.

13 Degrees Of Reality was the Heliocentrics second album originally released in 2012. Their debut Out There had been a magnificent mix of funk, jazz, krautrock and Music Concrete but the band took things further on an album which took in influences from Afrobeat and Latin music. They have many admirers with Madlib, DJ Shadow and Mulatu Astatke all self confessed fans of their work. Now is the time to join that queue if you haven't already. 

Hot on the heels of their joyous collaborative 2LP with Afrobeat trailblazer Orlando Julius, London's leftfield funk heroes Heliocentrics are at it again, this time on an LP with Melvin Van Peebles, a filmmaker, musician and author best known for his Brer Soul trilogy of albums in the '70s and for writing, producing, scoring, directing and starring in the 1971 film 'Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song'. The result is an interplanetary space/love odyssey which the band consider their defining work.

The Heliocentric, renowned for their collaborations with Mulatu Astake and Dj Shadow (among others), here add a new singer to their rich international brew, in the form of Barbora Patkova from Slovakia. A World Of Masks is another adventure in sound, mostly improvised, from a group who contain multitudes. Out on Soundway.

Lloyd Miller teaming up with The Heliocentrics, eh? Wonder what that’s going to sound like. Oh wait … yep, exactly like that. (OST) finds the hip young jazzers breathing new life into Miller’s East-gazing style. The group’s Sun Ra-indebted modalism proves a good foil for the Middle Eastern/Arabian explorations of Miller. Out via Strut.