Tenor’s music, along with his design and technical innovations, springs from experimental rock. His first recording band Jimi Tenor & His Shamans (1986-1992) was influenced by the early 80s industrial rock, where instruments were made out of scrap metal and plastic. Later during the 90s Tenor moved first towards electronic music, but soon got closer to his roots: 60s and 70s jazz, psychedelic soul and African funk.Although Tenor spent all of the 90s in Berlin, New York, London and Barcelona, his artistic approach was typically Finnish: technically practical, but saturated with black humour and a national romantic tone. So he was quite at home all over Europe in front of a crowd gone wild, wearing a glittering self-designed costume and a flowing cape, holding a noise-producing device the main components of which were a walkman made in Hong Kong and an East-German bicycle dynamo, performing a song about ancient Finnish forest gods, sounding like a mixture of Gil Evans, Jimi Hendrix and Fela Kuti.The music industry has found it difficult to operate with Jimi Tenor at times. The hard rock driven Finland of the 80s considered him weird and too marginal. In Britain in the 90s he was seen as a trendy techno jazz artist, but Tenor soon confused the pioneering electro label Warp by delivering an imaginary – and expensive – soundtrack album with a symphony orchestra, instead of making minimalistic hits.Today Jimi Tenor is an established European artist who operates outside the mainstream. His audience consists of clubbers and alternative rock enthusiasts looking for new perspective, but also of jazz and funk rebels. Those who understand that even unconventional pop music can move your body and heart.

01. Steve Reich: Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ
02. Esa-Pekka Salonen: Wing on Wing
03. Pierre Boulez: Répons, Section 1
04. Erik Satie: Vexations, Version 1
05. Edgard Varèse: Déserts
06. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Symphony No. 2 Op. 9 “Antar”, 1. Largo
07. Erik Satie: Vexations, Version 2
08. Steve Reich: Six Pianos
09. Pierre Boulez: Messagesquisse, Tres rapide
10. Edgard Varèse: Ionisation
11. Erik Satie: Vexations, Version 3
12. Georgi Sviridov: Choral Concerto without words in memory of Alexander Yurlov, no. 3 Chorale

by WiktorPl