During Spell (the new single), Jimi Tenor said: "I've been trying to keep my cool." It's hard to take this comment seriously when the performer is dressed like an Indo-Jazz Snow Queen, in a wedge-shaped helmet, with yards of net tumbling from harem pants and a midriff- revealing silver top. Previously he had been wearing a red kaftan with flapping flares. For sheer ambition and audacity, you've got to hand it to Tenor.

It's not just the outfits: in his bid for megastar domination, he sold out the Barbican Hall for two sets largely taken from his album Out of Nowhere, accompanied by two guitarists, bass guitar and drums, sitar and tamboura, plus Mike Kearsy, Tenor's regular trombonist, conducting the 60-strong Trinity College of Music Orchestra. They managed the funkier phrases with precision and added welcome colour and performance detail: sparkling celesta, punchy marimba and rasping bass trombone. Tenor was always busy, whether on flute, tenor sax, organ or Moog, while his urgent, fragile falsetto is effective and disorienting - like seeing Warhol singing Bowie in Elton John drag.

Tenor's sound is indebted to a whole generation of half- forgotten soundtrack composers, the studio-tanned pros who routinely "rescued" films by splicing and spicing big ensembles and boogaloo grooves with exotica and electronics. He and Kearsy have briefly resurrected this Frankenstein monster of contemporary music, once relegated to Oxfam vinyl bins and late-night TV. Close your eyes and you can see sex and violence, bad fashion and continuity errors. Open them and there's the more appealing sight of Tenor's two accompanying vocalists (Nicole Willis and Wanda Pittman), adding a nicely pitched soulfulness to songs such as Backbone of Night, Sugardaddy and the anthemic Better Than Ever.