Middle Eastern collective Music Matbakh cook up a musical feast

The rehearsal studio's up the Hackney Road. On the whiteboard in front of reception is a list of studio occupants. Lily Allen is one. A group called Chavelier is another. But the entire second-floor suite is taken by Serious, the music and tour promoting company.

At the end of the landing on the second floor, two young Middle Eastern men are perched together on a ledge, one beating out rhythms on it and the other striking a bone-dry groove on the gimbri, the three-stringed acoustic bass of Morocco's Gnawa musicians.

In the main studio, seven players are on a stage at one end of the room, two are sprawled on a leather sofa and another is putting new strings on a bass guitar. There are players here from Morocco and Tunisia, Jordan and Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and England.

When they arrived here on 7 May, none of them had ever met. Three days later, and they're preparing to play their first gig, at the Junction Shed in Cambridge.

Called Music Matbakh (the Arabic word for kitchen), this multinational collective was conceived and constructed by Serious and is supported by the British Council.

"It's like a musical version of Big Brother," says Justin Adams, Robert Plant's guitarist and Tinariwen's producer, as he watches the musicians limber up for another take. Brought into the project at the beginning of the year, Adams is here as both musical director and guitarist. "Nobody knows what's going to happen except that it's going to be fascinating and very creative."

On the sofa are Ruba Saqr, a singer from Jordan, and Syria's Issam Rafea, who plays the oud, a lute-like instrument. They inform me that the number being rehearsed has the challenging title of "Raggamorphine". The song is fronted by Lebanese rapper RGB in a blend of Arabic and French. The music is dense with the violin of Egypt's Mohamed Medhat, his fellow countryman Ousso on guitar, percussionist Lotfi Soua from Tunisia and the UK's Leo Taylor on drums. Moroccan singer Hicham Bajjou is up there too. In the confines of the studio, it's a thunderous ensemble, but each element can be heard finding its place.

Working all day, and staying together in the same hotel, the group is developing a real collective energy. "All of these guys are leading figures in their field," says Adams, who says he put a lot of time into choosing the right balance of musicians.

Adams hopes the Matbakh project can open new possibilities for Western audiences. "The drip-drip of the political situation has had a distancing effect," he says. "People who live in Syria - from the outside you think, what is that, it must be so alien. But you realise what an awful lot of the culture you share, especially among musicians, and especially now, when so much is available."

Ruba and Issam both tell of the same musical momentum across the Arab world: a young, vibrant, exploratory new audience waking up via a whole slew of inter-Arabic, East-West and North-South fusion music.

"Ten years ago we had nothing," says Issam, recalling the difficulty of getting hold of whole genres of music, both Eastern and Western. "Now we have everything." He describes a new musical fusion that players are putting together in the clubs of Damascus, with rock bands, jazz players, classical artists, and laptop electronica acts all working together.

The pan-Arabic fusion of Music Matbakh is itself breaking real ground in terms of musicians from Syria crossing not only musical but also national borders. Adams may compare it to a musical version of Big Brother, but it's really more like Channel 4's home-renovation programme Grand Designs (and it has to be said that Adams bears a fair resemblance to avuncular host Kevin McCloud).

"It's nothing like a solo project," Adams says. "No one's at the front using the others as a backing band, though a lot of them are leaders in their own country. Both the Syrians are serious teachers at the highest level. The two rappers [Morocco's Bigg, Lebanon's RGB] are the top rappers of their country."

The mix of players is a careful balance between more traditional players, such as Soua and ney player Moslem Rahal on the one hand, and urban MCs, rappers, rockers, and cutting-edge laptop artists such as Tunisia's Skander Besbes on the other.

Music Matbakh is tuning itself up for North African as well as Western audiences. After playing at London's Spitz on 25 and 26 May, the members fly to Morocco for their North African debut, a rap and metal festival in Casablanca - hardly the place for gentle oud improvisations. "When we're doing songs with elements of rap, rai [a type of Algerian folk music] and Egyptian music, that's what Casablanca will want to hear," says Adams.

At the Junction, the debut show on 12 May, Ousso's opening figures vault into a solo instrumental of high ambition. The violin takes a handful of wonderful, eloquent solos. Impassioned Moroccan and Lebanese rap - the well-worn MTV gangsta hand-movements given an elegant Arabic update- accompanies stripped-down electronica, acoustic instrumentals on oud and ney and a storming take on Moroccan gnawa trance.

As a work-in-progress, it is a fascinating proposition - even after a single week.

Music Matbakh play the Sage, Gateshead (0191 443 4661) tomorrow, and the Spitz, London E1 (020-7392 9032) 25-26 May