Tunisian-born Jean Pierre Smadja aka Smadj is also a member of DuOud, whose Wild Serenade album provided one of 2002’s most alarming electro-Arabic collisions. After an initial grounding in jazz guitar, Smadj, now based in Paris, moved increasingly towards electronica in the late 1990s, recording two solo albums for the MELT label.

He plays both acoustic and amplified oud, as well as swivelling his chair between production, programming and mixing duties.

‘Betty’ here gets off to a subdued start, drip-dropping spaced out beats and cutting up slivers of silvery oud. The mood is portentous, the bassline shaky. The bottom-most end is Smadj’s speciality, quaking speakers with sheer frequency rather than discernible notes. Malian singer Rokia Traore guests on ‘He Said’ and ‘Fatwords’ negotiating an even heavier dub load.

Smadj sculpts a sensitive, detailed high range to complement his deep bass brutality.

Traore’s own collaboration with The Kronos Quartet was shunned in certain global music circles, but her inspired meeting with Smadj  continues an obvious policy of stretching well beyond the realms of folk purism. Talvin Singh appears on ‘Vogue’, but this track skims past fairly uneventfully. The dub depth returns for ‘Aurore’, casting the oud in a spotlit glow, building into the next tune’s crunching leviathan rumble and stray telephone chatter.

The oppressive hum continues, with guitarist Amit Chatterjee (from Joe Zawinul’s group) guesting on ‘Drive’, also contributing his trademark floating vocals. The closing ‘Tristan’ sounds almost quaintly Jean-Michel Jarre-like but it’s the odd one out in an album of assured fusion experimentation. The dub is profound, the North African elements are unsullied and Smadj doesn’t allow his guests to divert from the music’s overall intent.