Today’s Psychedelic Sunday offering comes from London jazz-adjacent psychedelic underground ensemble The Heliocentrics. “Burning Wooden Ships” is from their just-released new album “Infinity of Now”. It’s their 10th album, and 2nd to feature vocalist Barbora Patkova:
I wasn’t familiar with The Heliocentrics until I heard them playing on the store sound system in Relics record store in Dunedin this weekend. “Burning Wooden Ships” here sets out their stall, so to speak. It combines a wide range of analogue instruments, sounds and tones along with the interstellar overdrive of Kosmiche musik psychedelic space-rock, all assembled upon the foundation of some of the finest motorik locked drum grooves I’ve heard since Can’s Jaki Liebezeit human-drum-machine burned itself into my conscious decades ago.
The Heliocentrics approach is explained far better on their Bandcamp page so I’ll use their own words:
“The Heliocentrics’ albums are all confounding pieces of work. Drawing equally from the funk universe of James Brown, the disorienting asymmetry of Sun Ra, the cinematic scope of Ennio Morricone, the sublime fusion of David Axelrod, Pierre Henry’s turned-on musique concrète, and Can’s beat-heavy Krautrock, they have pointed the way towards a brand new kind of psychedelia, one that could only come from a band of accomplished musicians who were also obsessive music fans.
They have been playing together for nearly two decades and their collective drive is to find an individual voice. The Heliocentrics search for it in an alternate galaxy where the orbits of funk, jazz, psychedelic, electronic, avant-garde and “ethnic” music all revolve around “The One.” The Heliocentrics have returned to develop their epic vision of psychedelic funk, while exploring the possibilities created by their myriad influences – Latin, African, and more.”
And yes, this is all as great and as weird and as wonderful as that explanation suggests it will be. Recommended for fans of Can, Broadcast, Jane Weaver, Sun Ra, and Fela Kuti.
Pop Lib 