Mulatu Astatke & the Heliocentrics: Inspiration Information 3

Label: Strut

We were all expecting great albums from Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear and Flaming Lips in 2009, but this record arrived with little fanfare and knocked us for a loop. Mulatu Astatke (born 1943) is a giant of Ethiopian music, a multi-instrumentalist pioneer of African jazz and one of the great arrangers. Reputedly the first African student at Berklee, he has blended jazz, Latin, and Ethiopian music into a truly distinctive, personal style. (His music was heavily featured in the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, sparking great interest in his work.) Sound Fix has already turned people on to his artistry via volume 4 in the great Ethiopiques series and a pair of LPs; this brilliant collaboration with U.K. groovemeisters The Heliocentrics gives Astatke some of the funkiest beats of his amazing career. At the London recording sessions, Ethiopian masters who live there were also called in to make this multi-cultural creation even more authentically amazing. This darkly modal music is one of the best albums of 2009 in three genres: soul/funk, jazz, and world music. (Steve)