Wigald Boning has had a checkered show business career, to say the least. He got his start playing in a German punk-jazz group called
Kixx in the early 1980s, then tried unsuccessfully to make it as a solo act. Following a much more successful career as a comedic television actor, he released a couple of albums in the guise of his TV character before releasing
Jet Set Jazz in 2008. The album is basically a duo project on which
Boning plays all the wind instruments and sings, while Robert Gioia plays keyboards, stringed instruments, and drums. The music is curious and anachronistic, and at times it's difficult to tell whether it's meant seriously or ironically. "Lost in London" is strangely cheesy, with echoes of horror movie theremin weaving around a smooth spy movie horn section; "Waltz" is similarly configured, but adds wordless vocals that bring to mind 1970s TV movies about swinging hipsters in striped pants. "Kobra Dance" is low-budget amateur disco; "Ballade pour Alexa" combines Syndrums, bass flute, and a moustache-twirling saxophone to rather smarmy effect; "Mali" incorporates, inexplicably, a sitar into the mix. At no point do either compelling hooks emerge or enough humor come through to make it clear what the point of this music is supposed to be. If it were more artfully arranged it might come across as a retro-hip lark, but as it is it just feels like a conceptually muddled mess. ~ Rick Anderson