If a big influence on your sound is Ethio-jazz, you know you’ve made it when you get praise from the emperor of Ethio-jazz, Mulatu Astatke. Mind you, the Sorcerers nailed that on first album In Search Of The Lost City Of The Monkey God so by the time their last LP, I Too Am A Stranger, came out, they were expanding their sound palette and getting plaudits from all over the shop including from Jamie Cullum on Radio 2 and Nightmares On Wax. To say that new long player (their fourth) Other Worlds And Habitats has been eagerly anticipated then is something of an understatement. Undeterred by the weight of expectation during the album’s gestation however, the Leeds-based outfit expanded personnel to include a keyboard player (step forward Johnny Richards) whose ‘quiver’ includes a Mellotron, a Farfisa organ and a Jen 73 piano and broadened their musical inspirations again to include the work of Astatke’s fellow Ethiopian Hailu Mergia and Nigerian funk and reggae legend William Onyeabor. And they’ve triumphed yet again with another inspired set recorded, as always, using analogue equipment.
Your interplanetary trip opens with the synth and sax drenched meanderings of Echoes Of Earth with Ancestral Machines up next foregrounding the retro-synths. Then it’s the turn of Abandoned Satellites with its chilled funkiness clearly indicating why Nightmares On Wax dig this band so much recalling, as it does, the spaced-out, late night, jazzy trip-hop sound of the Mo Wax label circa 1995. The wafty atmospherics of former single The Great Belt delivers arguably the LP’s most chilled track – except for maybe closer Last Transmission – while the best track’s orbit lies between these two. That’ll be the splendidly-named Ghosts Of The Black Rift then which sounds like the source of a sample on Tom Caruana’s 2023 LP Strange Planet. Other Worlds And Habitats is an absolute treat whether you’ve previously dug the Ethio-jazz sound or not and also a must for cinematic soul and library music fans too.
(Out now on ATA Records)