JIMI TENOR is impossible to to classify as a performer. A multi-instrumentalist, who designs his instruments from scrap and models his own fashions on stage, Tenor mixes widely distinct genres, including techno, jazz rock and Afro-American music, combining them with a natural bohemian streak and a penchant for silliness.

Jimi Tenor – real name Lassi Lehto – was born in Finland in 1965. A professional musician for almost 20 years, Tenor has also tried photography and directed short films. The electro-mechanic instruments built by Tenor and designer Matti Knaapi are not intended to be works of art on display in exhibitions, but some have ended up as such.

Tenor’s music, along with his design and technical innovations, springs from experimental rock.

His first recording band, Jimi Tenor and His Shamans (1986-92) was influenced by the early Eighties industrial rock, where instruments were made out of scrap metal and plastic. During the Nineties, Tenor moved first towards electronic music, but soon got closer to his roots – Sixties and Seventies jazz, psychedelic soul and African funk.

Although Tenor spent all of the Nineties in Berlin, New York, London and Barcelona, his artistic approach was technically practical, but saturated with black humour.

So he felt quite at home all over Europe, wearing a 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.

Today, Jimi Tenor is an established artist operating outside the mainstream. He is joined by a talented group of West African musicians – Kabu Kabu – whose distinctive Afrobeat is highlighted by Tenor’s bohemian touches.

■ Jimi Tenor and Kabu Kabu, Wednesday, July 8, 7.30pm, Gala Theatre, Millennium Place, Durham. Price: £12. Box Office: 0191-332-4041. Plus: buy a ticket for Jimi Tenor and pay just £4 for the aBrassive gig on July 18. Tickets must be bought in advance.