KG Westman & Zaعfaran

This unlikely mash-up of music and musicians from India, Egypt and Sweden is, perhaps against the odds, a resounding success. Driven in large part by the excellent sitar of KG Westman, who is also the guitarist for the Swedish rock band Siena Root, this album brings together a wide array of instrumentalists for what seem to have been highly enjoyable sessions.

Part of the fun of the album – and there is a lot of it here – is that hardly a musical style is left undissected: ‘Into the Desert’, a fabulously kitschy habanera, is followed by the pentatonics of ‘Kaaphal Hill’, and then the valve trombone of Stian Grimstad takes us into almost Miles Davis territory on ‘Ana Law Shakit’ before the track launches into a dance rhythm and we are caught somewhere between Egypt and the Balkans. And for a little variation there is an excursion into a more Swedish folk idiom on the lilting ‘Fan På Gräsö’. For all the playful eclecticism, the musicianship is serious and impressive. To highlight just a couple of examples, the kawala (flute) playing of Adham Al-Sayyad is a high point of many of the tracks, and there is some wonderful tabla playing on the appropriately named ‘Drum Talk’.