Strut repress a classic from 2010, The Heliocentrics’ groundbreaking studio
collaboration with Lloyd Miller, ‘(OST)’. Recorded following their
award-winning collaboration with Ethio jazz pioneer, Mulatu Astatke (Mojo
magazine Top 50 of the year 2009, Sunday Times World
Music Album of the year), pioneering UK collective The Heliocentrics resurfaced
with another fascinating jazz enigma, ethno-musicologist, jazz maestro and multi
instrumentalist, Lloyd Miller. Learning various instruments and immersing
himself in New Orleans jazz through his father, a professional clarinet player,
Lloyd Miller first trained himself in the styles of George Lewis and Jimmy
Giuffre and cut his first Dixieland jazz 78 rpm record in 1950. During the
late ‘50s, his father landed a job in Iran and Miller began to develop a
lifelong interest in Persian and Eastern music forms, learning to play a vast
array of traditional ethnic instruments from across Asia and the Middle East. He
toured Europe heavily, basing himself in Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany
(where he played with Eddie Harris and Don Ellis) and, most famously, in Paris
where he worked with leftfield bandleader Jef Gilson, a phenomenon in French
jazz during the early ‘60s. Miller returned to the Middle East during the
‘70s, landing his own TV show on NIRTV in Tehran under the name Kurosh Ali
Khan. His show became a national fixture and ran for seven years. More recently,
his mid-‘60s album ‘Oriental Jazz’ has become a
collector’s favourite. Emerging from an acoustic jazz session in 2007 set
up by Jazzman, the Heliocentrics collaboration was recorded at the
band’s Quatermass Studios in East London during January and February 2010, a
fresh, freeform mix of Eastern
arrangements, jazz and angular psychedelics. The recordings involved a number of
ethnic instruments that Miller played and studied throughout his career
including the oud, Phonofiddle, Indian santur, Chinese shawm and wooden flute.
Lloyd Miller & The Heliocentrics’ ‘(OST)’ will be repressed on its
original 2LP format, 1000 copies only.