Breathe in Love

Electric Sufi's debut is a dense thicket of influences and personalities, bringing together Manchester-based singer of Kashmiri heritage, Sarah Yaseen, Sheffield-based electronic and ambient musician, Rupert Till, and Doncaster-based multi-instrumentalist and former soloist in the Cairo Opera, Mina Mikhael Salama. As you might expect, they bring a lot to the table. With lyrics sung in Urdu, Punjabi, Persian, Latin and English, drawing on texts by German Christian mystic St Hildegarde of Bingen and various Sufi poets, qawwali devotionals, Urdu traditionals, and even a cover of a tune by Ghana's Ifang Bondi. Modernity and antiquity are melded into a polished, electronic 21st-century brew.

The album is preoccupied with encouraging a tackling of climate change, citing multicultural oneness and cooperation as the keys to this. It's a worthy aim, and there's some impressive musicality to back it up: Yaseen's sinuous vocals dip into microtonal swoons, while flute and zither add dreamy flourishes. But your enjoyment may rest on how much you dig slightly lumpen electronic beats. With its more traditional rhythms, the closing ‘Aval O Aahir (Electric Qawwali)’ is the most convincing.