Jimi Tenor and Tobias Levin are about as far apart in the geopop worldview as, say, Shabaka Hutchings and John McEntire. Jimi Tenor had his latest album produced by Tobias Levin in Hamburg. Things started with concerts in the Westwerk there, followed by recordings with Tenor’s live band in Levin’s Electric Avenue Studio, which is located above the location.
And these eight tracks are now surprisingly relaxed on an Alster brass band beat, they are all four or five minutes long and gain their momentum here and there from the combination of jazz and choral music (all band members sing). It sounds as if the multi-instrumentalist and Afrosound master and the Hamburg School musician and producer have done nothing other than jam with their buddies all their lives.
The track “Alice In Kumasi” also contains a link to the history of Tenor, who had already recorded in studios in Ghana and included the scene there, not long ago. But the piece, whose title could stand like a motto over the album, is called “Sunny Song” and could usher in the next easy-listening revival with flute tones and a completely tidy vocals. And make a promise: We’ll do it here and now without worries, without distortions and musical fragmentation. This is perhaps the most lasting impression among the many impressions that SELENITES, SELENITES! awakens: With attentive supervision, a type of jazz can emerge that reconciles many different camps through sounds.
This review appears in Musikexpress 1/2026.