Mulatu Astatke with the UK’s Heliocentrics Album Out Now

The third in Strut’s ‘Inspiration Information, Vol. 3‘ studio collaboration series, out now, brings together an intriguing pairing between one of Africa’s great bandleaders, Mulatu Astatke, with the UK’s Heliocentrics. Known primarily through the successful ‘Ethiopiques’ album series and the film soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Broken Flowers’, Mulatu Astatke is one of Ethiopia’s foremost musical ambassadors. Informed by spells living and studying in the UK and the USA, his self-styled Ethio-jazz sound flourished during the "Swinging Addis" era of the late ’60s as he successfully fused Western jazz and funk with traditional Ethiopian folk melodies, five tone scale arrangements and elements from music of the ancient Coptic church.

The Heliocentrics have become known as one of the UK’s foremost free-thinking collectives of musicians, inspired by a wide palette covering Sun Ra, James Brown, David Axelrod and all manner of psych, Afro and Eastern sounds. Now a fixture within the Stones Throw / Now Again roster, they forged their own genre-breaking directions in the astral analogue groove on their 2007 debut album, ‘Out There‘.

They will be performing live at the Big Chill Festival (8 August, Eastnor) and the Beachdown Festival (29 August, Brighton), as well as a special London date:
AGMP & Brownswood present: Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics + DJ Gilles Peterson
Wednesday, 20 May 2009, 7:30pm @ Koko, 1a Camden High Street, London NW1 7JE
Tickets: £20 advance. Available at http://www.seetickets.com  & http://www.ticketweb.co.uk

Part of Worldwide 10, a year long celebration of 10 years of Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Radio show