If that’s the case, the latest album from 60-year old Finnish multi-instrumentalist and all-around musical polymath Jimi Tenor (the first studio release by the five-piece Jimi Tenor Band) is very aptly named: joyful, vibrant yet still reassuringly expectation-defying, ‘Selenites, Selenites!’ could well be prescribed for admonishing the blues.
Cool minimalist techno, industrial skronk, lavish orchestral epics, expansive retro-soul workouts, lounge-infused big band jazz, far-out experimentation, expeditions to far-flung corners of global music (including 2009’s superb collaboration with the co-architect of Afrobeat Tony Allen on Inspiration Information Vol. 4): Tenor’s sprawling back catalogue is characterised by an aversion to typecasting via settling down in some cosy corner of the musical sphere.
Continuing the formidable winning streak established by two recent kosmische soul collaborations with Finnish neo-soul operators Cold Diamond & Mink (2024’s Is There Love in Outer Space? and July Blue Skies, released earlier this year), Selenites, Selenites! grabs a hold of many of Tenor’s enduring musical preoccupations and stuffs the seemingly disparate points of reference into a particularly funky blender. Although the results skitter unpredictably over genre barriers, often within a single song, the results make total, positively charged, resistance-battering sense.
For evidence, witness how the subtly Tropicalia-hued “Some Kind of Good Thing” moves seamlessly from a hard-swinging big band jazz-influenced introduction (which builds on the somewhat Sun Ra-reminiscent spiritual jazz foundations of the near-title track “Selenites”) to a shimmering soul tune that nods towards Tenor’s superb recent collaborations with Cold Diamond & Mink. Tenor may not have the strongest vocal chops in the world, but his impassioned plea on behalf of the unifying and healing potential of music on “Universal Harmony” (a hard-strutting funk groove elevated by deliciously cosmic keyboard squelches) is totally convincing, as is an excursion to sax-fuelled spiritual jazz on “Alice In Kumasi”.
Selenites, Selenites! really hits its stride in the final third, as Tenor’s interest in pulsating West African grooves collides with sweaty funk, jazz-fuelled extemporisation and minimalist electronica with seriously infectious results. Nodding towards both James Brown’s ur-funk minimalism and Fela Kuti’s more limber interpretations of the same themes of hypnotic repetition and the collective groove, “Looking For The Sunshine” shimmies and shakes with enough relentlessly sweaty intensity and pulsating warmth to bring a whiff of the humid nights of Lagos to the middle of a wintry cold spell. Featuring Ghanian singer Florence Adooni, the minimalist, energised pulse of “Shine All Night” is even more irresistible, combining the relentless momentum-building of electronic music with the musical stretching-out of jazz. Granted, the closing “Furry Dice” is more of a party with instruments than a fully mapped out song, but by that point it really doesn’t matter: Selenites, Selenites! is an ideal introduction to the Jimi Tenor’s open-eared, ever-changing MO.
