Great music is often about chance meetings and impromptu creative sessions and so it is that Hell Yeah proudly serves up Sensory Blending, a new collaborative album from Italian collective Aura Safari and Finnish musician Jimi Tenor. The nine-track record arrives on 26th April 2024 and is a lush and luxurious fusion of jazz-funk styles.

This glorious record came about after Tenor was playing a Hell Yeah party at Tangram in Perugia. Aura Safari were local and, in some free time the day before the gig, everyone jumped in the studio together. They had never met before but soon found plenty of free-flowing common ground and the result of that one-off session is now served up on this vibrant new album that brims with musicality, indelible melodies and subtly uplifting vibrations.

Tenor has toured the world and previously collaborated with the likes of Japanese master Calm. He is a psychedelic space-jazz-funk king, skilled musician, composer and producer who, since the mid-nineties, has released more than 25 albums and 45 EPs. Aura Safari is made up of bass, synth, guitar and keys players Lorenzo Francioli, Ruggero Bonucci, Nicola Pitassio Andrea Moretti, Lorenzo Lavoratori, Daniele Melloni and Nicholas Iammatteo, and they are label regulars who served up their sublime Island Dreams album here last year.

Says Jimi, who enjoyed his time in Perugia and adds that "the studio session was 100% efficient. I showed up and we started to play. Almost all that was made was material that we could use for the album. I love to work fast. Quick brushstrokes. Finish! I was amazed at how intuitively the Aura Safari guys could come up with new parts for songs. I mentioned some feeling or approach and they seemed to find it just like that.”

'Bodily Synesthesia' is the seductive opener with steamy sax notes and gentle grooves that are topped by aloof vocal whispers. 'Lunar Wind' is another slow and steamy mix of jazzy keys and soulful vocal hooks, 'Bewitched By The Sea' is a more tropical and percussive number with majestic melodies and 'My Bluebell' picks up the pace with jazz-funk grooves and hustling chords. 'Last Waltz In Perugia' has freeform sax lines soaring over meticulous drums that ebb and flow and 'Gimlet' brings a playful, samba-tinged rhythm and sunny flute leads straight from South America. There's a laidback, carefree mood to 'It's Too Easy To Love You' while 'Your Magic Touch' is a dancey number that exudes melodic joy, and 'Indigo' closes in dramatic fashion with a conversational sax that sticks long in the memory.  

Sensory Blending is a seamless fusion of collaborative minds from Aura Safari and Jimi Tenor and it could well be performed live at some special select shows later in the year.

Sensory Blending

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Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - Indigo

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - Your Magic Touch

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - Gimlet

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - My Bluebell (feat. Toimi Tytti)

The third in the Holy TrinTity of issues focusing on Hellenic mythologies. Really can’t promise it won’t become Tetralogy next year. But yeah, it became a tradition to do Grecian olive-hued melange before heading to Crete each June.

This season won’t be an exception. There’s always a moment during a rather long flight to Greece when you can no longer binge on unwatched TV, impersonate working on your laptop or solve puzzles. These selecciones are for that moment. As well as for subsequent imbibing of tsikoudia while taking in Aegean vistas and car rides to the ancient Aptera or one of the Lefka Ori’s gorges.

This time around I was triggered by the story that one Heraklion-dwelling historian once told me. A hypothesis that the myth of Atlantis might have been inspired by the catastrophic volcano eruption and subsequent tsunami around 1500 BC. The one that destroyed most of the cities and villages on Crete and Ancient Thera (modern Santorini). Effectively precipitating the decline of the Minoan civilization.

Long story short, that's a tiny fraction of diverse music that has to do with lost islands/continents, sea-bound mythology, civilization-destroying natural cataclysms and yes, the ever-terrifying story of Atlantis.

I said diverse, but what does it mean? Well, there’s some authentic traditional Greek music (actually Cretan one); some less authentic approximation of the ancient one (Paniagua’s reconstruction of the ‘Hymn to the Sun’); a few thematic extractions from Robert Ashley’s ouvres; some sun-lit jazz-adjacencies (Sun Ra, Hasell, Hosono, Vallon); a bit of olden synthy/proggy library music (Benoît Widemann, Joel Vandroogenbroek); a pinch of avantgarde (George Crumb); a drop of disco and vintage popular fare (John Forde); a dollop of aquatic new age (Toshifumi Hinata, J.D. Emmanuel)… Something like that. I think it worked out ok. Should pair nicely with watermelon and raki.

Full tracklist at:
https://snowsovgethen.com/journal/snows-ov-gethen-hermetic-journals-let-me-take-you-to-atlantis

Hermetic Journals: Let Me Take You To Atlantis

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - It’s Too Easy To Love You
G.F.X. - Eternal (Mix 1)
Seake - Ngoni 
Lavan ft. Corsica One - Tremendous 
Olive T - Say Something
Black Loops & Emanuele Barilli - GO
Luca Olivotto - Kind of Lovin
D Stone & Milion - The Next Morning
Jesse Bru - Where It All Began
United Spiritual Singers - Not A Minute Too Late (Tom Noble Remix)
Keep Tempo - I See You In The Movie With The Ghost (Deep88 Remix)
Bolis Popul - Kowloon 
Elisa Elisa - Lift Me Up
Caribou - Honey
Kloyd - Sur 
Deserted Island - Katunga
Francis Bebey - Coffee Cola (Young Marco Remix)

Subcity Radio - Listen Again

Episode 223 / Guest Mix 141: Monoot

Däncekowski im Diktatoren Showroom @ NysaBorderClub Part 3

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor's sublime Sensory Blending album yields its first set of remixes on Hell Yeah as Balearic Beat dream team Reverso 68 aka Phil Mison and Pete Herbert serve up two mixes of Your Magic Touch.

Reverso 68 is the studio-based project of Pete Herbert and Phil Mison, and over the last decade-plus, they have mastered the art of making music for swimming pools.

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor's original vision of 'Your Magic Touch' is a loved-up groove with golden chords and a killer funky bassline buried beneath the lush chords, horns and flute leads. It's perfect sundown music which gets dubbed out by Reverso 68. Their version is more low-slung and deep with a mid-tempo four-four groove sprinkled with tropical percussion. The muted chords are gloriously dreamy and the whole thing is perfect for early evening warm-ups.

Their second Reverso 68 remix is a little more upright and direct but still soundtracks an island escape where the skies are blue and the cocktails are cold. The mending bass soon hooks you in while the chords drift up top to soul-soothing effect.

Summer might be over, but the good times will live on with this superb trio of escapist jams.

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - Your Magic Touch (Reverso 68 Remix)

Bandcamp

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - Your Magic Touch  (Reverso 68 Dub)

Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - Your Magic Touch (Original Mix)

"If you didn't know, Hell Yeah is the Italian label hell-bent on releasing the best modern disco(ish) you can find. Sometimes it's blissed out and Balearic, sometimes it's squelchy and down-right weird and sometimes it's the sort of elongated, tribal stuff that works dancefloors into a salacious frenzy" (Kristan J Caryl - DJ MAG January 2014)


Hell Yeah Recordings, a descendent of leading Italian dance label Mantra Vibes is an Italian-based electronic music label active since 2006. Releasing from Ferrara, Bologna, and Amsterdam and led by Marco Gallerani “peeDoo” (A&R), the label bases its philosophy on a diversity of artists and recording experiences tied together by a common vision of what defines quality progressive recording. 

With a sound as diverse as the artists it represents, Hell Yeah does not limit itself to the constraints of genre but packs a complex palette of sounds ranging from techno to minimal-nu-rave to electro-funk and tech house.  Artists as varied as Radio Slave, Santos, Umek, Oliver Koletzki, Congorock, 3iO, Crimea X and the mighty Balearic Gabba Sound System have helped establish Hell Yeah’s eclectic sound, a distinct take on party music loaded with a sonic Balearic feel good vibe that has made press around the world hail Hell Yeah as a label to watch, always

Hell Yeah aims to build upon its current reputation as a leading Italian Electronic Music play, overseeing the release of a series of progressive productions that straddle genres, defy conventions and blur barriers between listening and dance music. Stemming from Hell Yeah’s initial graphic identity formed by Neverending’s Rocco “the Boghe” Pezzella, new mind-bending web and label artworks from Italian artist Andrea Amaducci and the Berlin-based Ice Cream For Free collective promises complete visual as well as aural stimulation.

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Record label & radio show celebrating House music and the wider Electronic genre.
Broadcasting every fortnight on Glasgow's iconic Subcity Radio since 2012.

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