Radio Bagdad

Musical fusions are capricious beasts: there is no foolproof recipe for success, however interesting the idea behind them or talented the players involved. Iraqi-born Fawzy Al-Aiedy is something of a walking fusion in himself:he studied both Western classical and Arab traditional music from an early age and the combination of political strife in his homeland and a love of decadent poets such as Verlaine lured him to France in 1971.

The music on Radio Bagdad is a very personal blend of the two cultures: Al-Aiedy's voice and some of the instrumentation make the songs immediately recognisable as Middle Eastern but a whole host of European influences underpin the recording. Shadows of light jazz-funk, Gallic chanson and flamenco float through the very busy arrangements and a production that is so tight it almost sounds artificially programmed. This is a great disservice to the searingly hot group of musicians who play on the album – most notably the violinist Jasser Haj Youssef. Whether or not you take to it all will ultimately depend on how you take to the all-pervasive personality of Fawzy Al-Aiedy: one man's wry witticisms are another man's self-satisfied witterings.