Jimi Tenor

3 / 5 stars 3 out of 5 stars.
Jazz Cafe, London

There is a long and honourable tradition of jazz-funk musicians donning silly clothes and singing songs about space. Sun Ra started it, and Funkadelic, Lonnie Liston Smith and Earth Wind and Fire turned it into a kitsch art-form. Now, Finnish multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tenor has revived the idiom by adding a healthy dose of afrobeat, courtesy of drummer Savage Ekow-Alabi.

The eight musicians, wearing spangled cloaks and floral garlands, are deceptively good: tight where the music demands it, but equally able to turn in a bit of hooligan jazz, with blaring trumpet and trombone solos, to complement Tenor's more wayward tendencies. They're not a jazz group - you don't see many jazz musicians at the Jazz Cafe these days - but they don't take themselves seriously the way a rock outfit would.

Tenor's repertoire of quirky and tuneful pop music sounds good in this context, powered by horns, a funky rhythm section and two percussionists, Nicolas Addo Nettey and Famson Akinola. Each has a vocal feature: Nettey on Gimme Little Bit and Akinola on the Fela Kuti tune Water Get No Enemy. Tenor is not much of a singer, so he delivers his songs deadpan and lets the costume do the rest. In addition to his usual glittering harem pants and animal-print top, he sports a mad helmet, covered in sequins and topped by yards of red chiffon, two voluminous strands of which are attached to his knuckles. It doesn't seem to affect his playing. Tenor sits behind a Fender Rhodes suitcase piano, his flute propped against a piercingly amplified Moog, which he plays with his forehead during Tsunami.

Only a few people attempt to dance to Tsunami's monster riff, but everyone loves it anyway. Tenor's best songs, such as Strawberry Place, Miracles and Beyond the Stars, the title track of his latest album, have maddeningly catchy hooks. And he can do a lot with one note, as the stomping encore of his hit Sugardaddy proves.