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- The Observer, Sunday September 24 2000
Jimi Tenor Barbican, London EC2
Jimi Tenor has a theory on how to get grand, orchestral compositions across to the younger generation: 'You just tell them it's film music, like Planet of the Apes, and they accept it,' reckons the 35-year-old Finn. Accordingly, Jimi's recent orchestral record, Out of Nowhere , was scored for a series of imaginary film scenes, and sounds like a hybrid of Shaft , sci-fi and Henry Mancini. It's a bold step on from his previous albums, which were little more than elaborate loungecore, and from his previous life as a member of a Finnish avant-garde ensemble who specialised in music made from empty oil drums.
Last Sunday, Jimi brought his widescreen visions to the plush setting of London's Barbican Centre, augmenting his regular group with the 60-piece Trinity College Orchestra, a youthful ensemble who come dressed for the occasion - the tuba player, for instance, sporting kilt and DM boots. Jimi himself is togged out in a scarlet and gold kaftan with matching flares, commanding affairs from the keyboard of his Hammond organ. Opposite, his blind sitar player sits cross-legged in a monster pair of shades, looking like India's answer to Ray Charles, while a pair of languid Afro-Saxon foxes provide vocals from centre stage, one of them being Jimi's newly-wed wife.
The set-up is so dazzling, the sound so sweeping, that at first the show just rolls over you, especially 'Out of Nowhere'. There's involvement, too, in the shifting interplay of orchestra, sitar, guitars, vocals and the funky interjections of Jimi's key boards and sax. Gradually, however, Jimi's musical limitations impinge. His efforts on the tenor sax which lent him his name (he was born Lassi Lehto) lope along nicely in the style of Fela Kuti, but his keyboards remain leaden. And much though he might fancy himself as the arctic Barry White, lines like 'I love you baby, that's what I want to say to you, it's a nice feeling, so c'mon' sound plain absurd without a basso profundo voice.
By the time a waitress in four-inch heels totters on to serve the band champagne, you sense that you're on the inside of an elaborate, Austin Powers joke. Quite a good joke mind you, as Jimi proves when he takes up a homemade scratch-box, apparently constructed from dead tape recorders and recycled aero-aluminium, and frantically cranks its handle as the violinists saw away.
For the second half Jimi re-emerges in full drag, his silver dress and bonnet making him look like a cross between Elton John and Narnia's White Witch. The music shifts from the heavier arrangements of 'Blood On Borscht' (inspired by Tarkovsky's Solaris) to the orchestral soul of 'Spell', where Jimi unleashes his Al Green falsetto.
It's easy listening - all too easy, as the bemused expressions of the orchestra testify - but evidently just what Jimi's ecstatic crowd want to hear. As he encores with 'Sugardaddy', an old favourite, Jimi beams from beneath his bonnet, the satisfied look of a nerd who's persuaded everyone else to join in his madcap game.
• Out of Nowhere and the single, 'Spell', are released on Warp
