RECORDS / New Releases: Trans-global Underground: Dream of 100 Nations (Nation, CD/double LP/tape)

An unclassifiable fusion of muezzin wails, hi-tech beats, house piano, Sixties punk guitar, African chants, dub poetry and Far Eastern orchestras (and that's just the first song) which makes for exhilarating listening. With so many ingredients, this might easily degenerate into a formless World soup, but what's served up instead is a series of distinctive chef's specials. The first side, boasting the epic 'Temple Head' and the wondrous desert dance of 'Slowfinger', is the best, but this vibrant, London-based collective sustain the momentum to the happy end, an uplifting cod-samba anthem called, appropriately, 'Hymn to Us'.