PREMIERE : Aura Safari & Jimi Tenor - Gimlet

Les Yeux Orange

Great music is often about chance meetings and impromptu creative sessions and so it is that Hell Yeah proudly serves up Sensory Blending, an album from Italian collective Aura Safari and Finnish musician Jimi Tenor, a nine-track long player that is a lush and luxurious fusion of jazz and funk. 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. 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. Jimi Tenor has toured the world and previously collaborated with Japanese master Calm. He is a psychedelic space-jazz-funk king, a 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 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 on Hel Yeah last year. 'Bodily Synesthesia' is seductive with steamy sax and gentle grooves, 'Lunar Wind' is a slow and steamy mix of jazzy keys and soulful vocals, 'Bewitched By The Sea', is tropical and with a percussive majestic melody. 'My Bluebell' picks up the pace with jazz-funk grooves, while 'Last Waltz In Perugia' has freeform sax lines soaring over meticulous drums that ebb and flow. 'Gimlet'brings a samba-tinged rhythm and sunny flute leads. There's a laidback, carefree mood to 'It's Too Easy To Love You', while 'Your Magic Touch' is a dance number that exudes melodic joy. 'Indigo' closes out with a conversational sax that will stay long time your memory.