PHILOPHON, the Berlin label with a deep and abiding mission to bring forth all things with a deep groove, has today released a “haptic” 7” by Finnish multi-dimensional artist Jimi Tenor.
The A, “Sugar and Spice” is big, fly, funk: brass stabs, polyrhythms from Ghanaian drummer Ekow Alabi, jazz horn clusters. It’s heading across 110th Street, with your behind shimmying in its pocket. The 7” is the perfect physical realisation of a tune this dope.
For me, the flip is where the action is: “Lover’s Bridge (Instrumental)” is built around an insistent pinging percussive line, and brings a real north African organ line forth, calling and responding with massed brass. Think 60s’ Sun Ra. It’s the theme song 7” you found in a dusty and unfashionable shop somewhere out on a vinyl scout and gasped at – in your dreams.
Both these excellent slices of deep groove have been sent forth unto us to prepare the way for an album, provisionally titled Aulos, to follow this October.
And why ‘haptic’? In a digital world, a 7” is something you can actually touch: “haptic feedback devices create the illusion of substance and force within the virtual world”
Make sure you get the 7” of – Jimi Tenor’s “Sugar and Spice”/“Lover’s Bridge (Instrumental)” at Bandcamp, here.
