This cannot be real. The mind boggles. Legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, the co creator of Afro-beat (with the help of some bloke named Fela Kuti), teaming up with Jimi Tenor, the Finish experimental lounge dude who left Warp because they weren’t allowing him to experiment enough. These kind of collaborations just do not happen. It’s worlds colliding. It’s as bizarre as it is inspired.
Or perhaps not. Tenor has recently developed an interest in African rhythms, and on 2007′s Joystone he teamed up with a trio of West African musicians Kabu Kabu including former Fela sideman Nicholas Addo Nettey – who curiously enough was part of Fela’s Africa 70 with Tony Allen, defecting at the same time during the Berlin jazz festival. Allen meanwhile these days seems to be creating this kind of smooth Afro-beat lite, best evidenced by his album from earlier in the year, Secret Agent, which had a strong jazz fusion element, with well polished highly produced sounds with great musicianship, yet little soul.
To some extent this disc can be seen as a development, maybe even the fruition of Tenor’s experiments from two years ago, despite the constraints placed around them such as spending only 5 days in the studio together. Tenor reports that they produced these long 10-20 minute jams, often moving beyond the demo material and into free improv, secure in the knowledge that Tenor would be cutting and pasting later. They’re joined by Tenor’s Kabu Kabu band, yet also the Berlin based MC Allonymous, who raps with a kind arrogant stupidity over a couple of tracks, which is initially annoying, because you don’t want anyone to get in the way of these two, yet actually seeps in and becomes quite catchy. Whilst not strictly Afro-beat, there is what you could call an Afro-beat patter throughout, Allen keeping an energetic pulse, doing what he always does – creating an amazing groove in his unique polyrhythmic style. When this is combined with Tenor’s idiosyncratic horns and dated keys, it moves everything into this kind of anonymous groovy jazzy space that is simply awe inspiring. You can feel the jamminess of the music, it just flows onwards, powered by Allen’s deep rhythms and sense of groove. Tenor sings on a couple of tracks, pitching up and sexing up his vocals like a white boy Sly Stone and you can just tell he’s in his element. This whole album is a monster, particularly the final 13:51 min piece Three Continents which initially is disconcerting, like someone is playing hopelessly along with a toy guitar, yet over time the focus shifts, Tenor brings in his jazz organ, aimless skat vocals arrive, and it dips into a sort of transcendental drone before kicking back in under a tripped out saxophone solo and you never want it to end. Much like the album as a whole. The curious thing is it’s everything that you would expect when you put the two of them together, yet it’s also so much more, surpassing expectations and expanding frontiers, the duo merging so well and bouncing off the other musicians and sending afro-beat sprawling into an almost kitsch lounge territory that is not only super cool and funky, it’s also funny and as fun as hell.
Bob Baker Fish
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