Diwan of Beauty and Odd

Singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef is one of music's unrelenting explorers. From his roots in Tunisia he has travelled far, both geographically and sonically. After early successes collaborating with Scandinavian electronics improvisers, he has recently focused more on acoustic settings. In this, his seventh album, he is accompanied by a group of top jazz musicians from New York on piano, double bass and drums, with occasional trumpet from rising star Ambrose Akinmusire. Others have shown that the oud can work well in a jazz-based setting, especially when the music comes more from a North African Gnawa tradition as it does here. But this reduced sound palette doesn’t serve Youssef's compositions particularly well. His songs are based on repeated, short-note patterns rather than substantive melodies. Without harmonic development either (as you would expect in Arabic music) they can feel like they are treading water.

Even with musicians of this calibre, they sometimes have so little room to move they don’t reach take-off velocity in their improvisations. The playing is excellent and the whole album is sumptuously produced, however. It certainly won’t lose Youssef any fans, and may well win him more, but it does make you wonder where his next venture might take him.