If you are not familiar with Finland's Jimi Tenor, I guess you would probably first do a search on one of the general music sites. Among other things, you'll find the info that unlike other IDM/electronica artists, he tend to lean more towards the loungey variant that sees his inspiratoion in the likes of Isaac Hayes and Bill Withers who saw thir heights in the Seventies. Forget that. Jimi's idols, at least for the last decade, are Sun Ra and Nigerian beat sound. Or maybe you shouldn't forget it, Hayes and Withers are still present, but then Sun Ra and Fela Kuti liked them too. Check, for example Sun Ra's "Lanquidity" album from 1978. So, these days, for Jimi Tenor its Marshall Allen (from Sun Ra's band) and Toni Allen (the renowned Nigerian drummer). In recent times he collaborated with them at one point or other anyway.
All this can be felt on Tenor's latest outing "Saxcentric". The opener "Cap De Creus", is a fluent spiritual or soul jazz number that could have been found on any of "Strata-East" or "Muse" albums during their heyday, or any of Sun Ra's album that relied more on melody than on Ra's synthesizer experimentations. The following number, "Full House" is a bright Afrobeat number, fit for any Jazz tinged party at any given weekend. And it goes on like that throughout the album, like a layer cake, a line of spiritual/soul jazz, a line of funky Afrobeat. But you couldn't call any of it mimicking or imitation, Tenor hs fully integrated his personna into this music and has made it his own. But then, he has done that for a number of his recent issues, producing yet another quality album. Very enjoyable.
