P-Hex’s Quantum Funkanics is not just a record… it is also a record

Quantum Funkanics the latest album from Northampton funk legends P-Hex is finally out and guitarist Steve Gordon gave an insight into how the band came together and why the recording is a tribute …

Where it all began….

Paul Chant and I (bass and guitar respectively) were creating music in the mid–late eighties under the banner of ‘Hex’. We were a harsh, industrial duo, with sequenced drum-loops and an angular outlook on the culture of the day.

The beauty of the early Hex was in its ability to tour in a small car…..compact and bijou. Sometimes we played with the company of our local shouting champion, The Rev Oral Spence, again, compact and bijou…little did we realise the Frankenstein style monster lurking before us.

It was little more than a whim in the early nineties, when Paul and I decided we wanted to create something more organic, something living and breathing, away from the confines of sequenced material that, coupled with the availability of our drummer pal, Johnny Mattock having some time on his hands after playing with the band Spiritualized.

We had a jam in Johnny’s cellar, beneath a huge poster of the Father of Funk, George Clinton (the image where he’s skiing on the back of two dolphins), the funk flowed through the room like an all-encompassing narcotic, we knew there was no way back to ‘normality’, we dropped the technology and embraced the ‘one’. Hex became P-Hex in the space of an afternoon.

Since then, P-Hex has become a collective, or, possibly more accurately, a sanctuary for wayward souls looking for a funky refuge. A dizzying array of musicians, singers, swingers and good time guys and gals have passed through our little idea of music, truly a privilege.

With band members frequently outnumbering the audience, P-Hex is a travelling freak-show, swearing and shaking its collective booty up and down the country, but, more importantly, in its home town of Northampton, and its annual beano way out west in Builth Wells for the now legendary parties.

So, a lot can happen in a quarter of a century, and, as with the rest of the planet, P-Hex has been through more than a few changes, but the most recent and personally devastating was the tragic, untimely death of my friend, co-conspirator and fellow gun-slinger, Paul Chant 18 months ago.

When the realisation of Pauls illness sunk in, we decided we had to do some form of recording, provide some kind of legacy (we hadn’t recorded any more than demos before this as we saw the band as very much a ‘live experience’, not a ‘studio project’).

Contact King Genius records here

Our wonderful friends at King Genius records agreed, and suggested a P-Hex album would be appropriate, so with consummate professionalism, and impeccable timing, Paul laid down his bass guitar with the band before cashing in his chips, leaving us with an album of twisted funk for the fearless to be released this month, titled ‘Quantum Funkanics’.

P-Hex will continue to play live, with the huge talent that is Steve Davies in the bass playing boots.

If you buy the album, I hope you like it. If you do, come and see us play. If you play, come and join in.

All for One, and One for all.

Everything is on the One

One Love.

Stevie G