Will the real Jamie Lidell please stand up? Is he the envelope-pushing super-geek who does amazing things with his banks of customised gadgetry? Or the caramel-voiced crooner in search of the perfect soul song? Is his musical mission to surprise, challenge, punish? Or does he prefer to seduce his audience with melodious paeans to lurve?

Such questions have dogged the singer/songwriter/programmer/producer since he emerged in the early Noughties. Electronic music has never been short of nerdy knob-twiddlers, but precious few could also sing so sweetly that they had reviewers spinning a roulette wheel of iconic comparisons: Gaye, Cooke, Wonder, Mayfield. When, though, did Marvin or Stevie ever sample their own voice and twist it into an improvised barrage of cacophony while dressed in a sou'ester?

It's hard to get a handle on the 34-year-old Lidell. Earlier in the week he was burning up the stage of a Soho revue bar, a bundle of energy resplendent in gold lamé. Today, at the West London offices of his publicist, he is in Clark Kent mode - heavy-rimmed specs, an air of elegant shabbiness. He mimes bafflement: “Who is this guy? Scientist? Soulboy? Noise kid? Techno artist? I've been asked that question so much I just think I've got to be all those things and more. Is that a negative thing?”

Not at all, but it did encourage Lidell to “put a bracket around my schizophrenic outpourings” on his new record, Jim, which eschews out-and-out experimentation in favour of glittering takes on Motown, electric soul, smoky ballads and rockabilly funk, all of which foreground that muscular, mellifluous voice. Following a curve from the “fully unlistenable” Muddlin Gear (2000) via Multiply (2005) - which had a foot in both camps: soulful and experimental - Jim is, I suggest, Lidell's most accessible album.

“It is,” he sighs. “I wanted to make it commercial just as an experiment. My ideal audience is people who appreciate that I'm not just a singer, but some people just want to go out and have a nice night with some nice music and I totally understand that.”

The album is a reflection of his mellower, Dr Jekyll side, which is not to say that Mr Hyde won't make an appearance when Lidell embarks on next month's UK tour. “When I'm tired or frustrated with myself, I tend to make a lot of noise in shows,” he admits with a wry grin. “F*** everyone! Listen to this, bastards - it's gonna hurt! I need to cleanse myself.” What kind of things get his goat?

“Everything, from people pushing into a queue to really substantial problems: where am I going? Am I doing the right thing with my life? Am I going to die?”

The tension between science and art, soul-searching and melody-making, would appear to stretch back to Lidell's childhood in Perry, a village just outside Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. His mother, a classical singer, would trill around the house; his father, a psychologist, was “a very cerebral man” who “always seemed to know everything”. Also looming large in Lidell's formative years was Prince, whose music taught him that synths and soul were not mutally exclusive. His education continued at Bristol University, where he studied the cosmic combination of physics and philosophy and revelled in the golden era of Massive Attack et al.

After a stint in Brighton, where he began a longstanding collaboration with South Coast electro hero Cristian Vogel, Lidell moved to Berlin and set about finding a USP. He took a year out to programme his own software and developed an innovative way of working, which involved sampling his voice on a loop pedal and building tracks live, entirely from those samples. “Now everybody's got a loop pedal,” he sniffs. “Nice, but I was doing that seven years ago. Did that go completely unnoticed?”

For his live appearances Lidell has recently started playing with a band because “when TV shows ask me on I can't go up there and do it solo”. When he appeared on Later..., he got round the problem by duetting with Jools Holland, a decision he now regrets. “He's a nice geezer, but I should have gone on there and blown everyone's minds with some solo shit.” He still seems unconvinced about the merits of a band: “I can hear a band playing and think, Christ, I hate bands. But here I am singing with a bunch of guys.”

He needn't fret, though, because the new live set-up works like a dream, the band providing a foil for their gawkily charismatic frontman and his Little Richard moves. And Lidell is always free to embark on his solitary detours: “If I'm not down with the way a song sounds with the band, I'll go, f*** this: I'm doing this one solo with all my machines.”

The whole business is “a constant battle for me”, he admits with a wonky smile. But that, you suspect, is how he likes it. “I don't like to be secure.” Hence his imminent move from Berlin to Paris: “There's something about being exotic and being on the outside that I thrive on. I like to be the underdog, it helps me creatively.” I'm looking forward to seeing him live next month, I tell him. He grins: “Hopefully, you'll see a new me.” What, yet another one?

Jim is released on April 28. The single, Little Bit of Feel Good, is out on April 14

Explore Music

• Proms

• Festivals

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

Editor's choice

• The End: the worst movie endings ever
• Introducing The Times Proms Podcast
• Heath Ledger tipped for Oscar