© Gawain Hewitt (more photos from the event at TheirSpace)

Last week, I promised you the audio files of Mulatu Astatke’s gig with The Heliocentrics in London. Well, the time is now. Hopefully, the two videos from the session made the waiting period seem not as long. (This release is so hot that I had to start a new post category.)

Mulatu Astatke, born in Ethiopia in 1943, is the father of so-called Ethio-Jazz. It is safe to say that he has left quite a mark in the history of music. The 9-piece Heliocentrics, on the other hand, are a fairly new band. Their style consists of an unclassifiable mix of Jazz, Psychedelic, Funk, Soul, Rock, Percussion, Hip-Hop, Electronic, etc. (I could go on for hours.) Their phenomenal debut record, “Out There,” was released last year. For them it is also safe to assume that they will leave their mark in music history, if they have not already done so.

These two, Mulatu and The Helios, joined forces about two months ago for one of Karen P’s Broad Casting gigs at the Cargo in London. It’s already an incredible pleasure to listen to their individual records. So you can’t even begin to imagine how great it is when they’re live on stage together.

Thanks to one of the event’s organizers, the Red Bull Music Academy, we cannot only watch some clips from the session but also listen to the set in its entirety. They actually offer an on-demand stream at their online radio station. You can’t download the material there, though. But you can do so right here and right now.

According to Mulatu, he only rehearsed with The Helios for about six to seven hours. With that in mind, the result is even more awe-inspiring. Watch out for the improv bit starting around two minutes into track number 3, “Yègellé Tezeta.”

Sit down, hold on to your seats, and prepare yourselves for one hour and six minutes of music of eargasmic proportions. It does not, nor ever will it get any better than this. As always, Malcolm Catto’s performance on the drums is breathtaking. (Check my post from last Thursday again for two video clips from this very concert.)

Please remember to download both files for this. Otherwise you won’t be able to listen to any of it.

****UPDATE**** (November 21, 2008)
Since I posted this in June, I realized that a few things were wrong with this release. For one, a lot of tracks didn’t have the correct title. This is now fixed. Then, the first track was actually two separate tracks. I split it up and sorted everything out. The download links and tracklist you see below correspond to the “new” and fixed release. Everything is now perfect as far as titles, track order, and track separation are concerned.

To all those who have already downloaded this before, I advise you to delete the old material and get the fixed version. Simply retagging the existing MP3s won’t do the trick. To all others, you can safely disregard this update notice and download without having to worry about anything.

Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics – Live At Broad Casting, Cargo, London. 17 April 2008 (2008) @ 256 kbps (Total 1:06:31)

Part 1
Part 2
(Both files can be downloaded simultaneously.)

1. Yèkèrmo Sèw (Live) – 5:39
2. Gubèlyé (Live) – 4:27
3. Yègellé Tezeta (Live) – 4:04
4. Mulatu (Live) – 7:36
5. Kulumanqualeshi (Live) – 7:11
6. Kasalèfkut Hulu (Live) – 6:33
7. Ethio Blues (Live) – 5:29
8. Yèkatit (Live) – 5:43
9. Munayé (Live) – 5:57
10. Nètsanèt (Live) (RBMA Radio Version) – 7:22
11. Nètsanèt (Live) (Complete Version) – 6:34 (@ 320 kbps)

Okay, enough said. Let the music speak for itself. Most likely, this will be the best download I’ll ever offer on this blog. Not because there’s only crap music lying around at my place (though that may be the case), but because this is “the best of the best of the best.”

Many thanks go out to Sun|Rah for the initial legwork.

Drop me some comments about this release. I’m really curious what you think.

Selam, (that’s Amharic)
3ardrumm3r

P.S. Coming up every week now, full downloads of Gilles Peterson’s weekly two-hour-long BBC Radio 1 show.