Album Review

Mulatu Astatke/The Heliocentrics
Inspiration Information 3
(Strut)

The third in Strut’s Inspiration Information series, this
matching of Ethiopian composer/
vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke and
British psych-funk wonks the Heliocentrics is the best one yet.

You may know Astatke from Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers soundtrack, which featured his strangely haunting jazz pieces; Astatke
is also one of the stand-out artists on the long-running
Ethiopiques compilation series. The Heliocentrics have backed DJ
Shadow on record, and their leader, Malcolm Catto, possesses vast
knowledge of subterranean music’s richest veins. The Heliocentrics’
aptly titled 2007 album Out There reflects their assimilation of
Sun Ra–like astral jazz, BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s analog-synth
blippertronics, soundtrack composer Roy Budd’s suspenseful
tension-building, and the sort of OG funk that built hiphop’s
golden-age foundation.

Inspiration Information‘s opening cut, “Masenqo,” starts with
a moving, gorgeous female vocal, possibly in Amharic, and then breaks
into a suave, midtempo jazz-funk glide, featuring glancing strings,
fleet, rambling piano, and distorted guitar riffs that recall those
David Axelrod deployed while producing the Electric Prunes. In other
words, these folks intend to give you something you’ve never quite
heard before.

They mostly keep their promise throughout the disc’s 14 tracks.
“Mulatu” combines Afrobeat and off-kilter jazz funk, as languid brass
contrasts with the urgent, coiled rhythm. “Esketa Dance” is slow,
elegant, stealthy—at once staccato and melismatic, again with a
pronounced rhythmic/melodic disjunction that creates a dynamic
friction. “Addis Black Widow” and “Live from Tigre Lounge” flirt with
Miles Davis’s tense, humid fusion fission circa On the Corner.
On the opposite tip, “Blue Nile” renovates beautiful, blissful triphop,
like mid-’90s Nightmares on Wax bolstered by contemplative,
Tortoise-like guitar. “Anglo Ethio Suite” closes the album with a rich
darkness, as if converting a Shakespeare tragedy into music.

The elements Astatke and the Heliocentrics use aren’t unprecedented,
but the manner in which they combine them is. They’re evoking elusive
moods, throwing strange shapes, generating unusual sounds—aided
by things like washint (bamboo flute), begena (ancient
10-string harplike instrument), and krar (six-stringed
five-toned instrument). It’s the rare music that can do these things
and not sound incoherent. Here’s hoping this isn’t a one-off
collab.