Opium Cellar, Tewkesbury

After an inexplicable fifteen year absence, Tikka Massalis made a welcome return to the UK last night with his unambiguous translucent blend of elegiac gastro-funk and experimental Senegalese-Icelandic fusion. Smiling graciously at a wide-eyed audience, he slid quickly into the exorbitantly minimalist strains of “Gorgonzola Tortellini” before moving up-tempo to the probingly, high-octane groove of an all-to-familiar urban “Saratoga Chicken”.

Like a pair of well-worn trainers that surprise and exhilarate you at every turn, Massalis presented his new saxophonical addition, Shaman (Fish Stew, St. Louis, 1973), proving, if proof were needed, that there is only one genuine underlying theme to his new album: music.

Massalis strutted incandescently over a chord-retentive pizzicato, delicately harpooning the espadrille-like enigma of Shaman’s eclectic semibreves, pausing only for a matter of seconds to cup his ear and listen to the pervading high-pitched hum of the air conditioner. And the audience nodded approvingly.

Warm applause greeted the rare guest appearance of Latino percussion scatmeister Anta, flown in from his hospital bed in Moenchengladbach, to play his solitary quintessential trademark triangle note on the age-old, neo-classical rhapsody “Faustus’s Baby”. There was no mistaking the genuine article. The Beast is back.

Smiles rippled through the dedicated onlookers as Massalis eased his slithering tongue unexpectedly into the crocheted rhythm of “White Poodle in a Harlem Speakeasy”, before tripping an idiosyncratic light fantastic into the cymbal-fuelled climax of “Catfish Shampoo”, which erupted long and high into the intoxicating, sweet-scented Gloucestershire evening air. Truncated only by the police raid.

The show continues in Pudsey on Tuesday.