The Road to Damascus

Followers of Nick Page, former frontman of Transglobal Underground and serial musical collaborator, might be surprised by his latest project. After the crowd-pleasing and thoroughly stomping Dub Colossus, here is a much more pared-down foray into Middle Eastern fusion music. Page's project, recorded in Damascus, is an attempt to step away from this negative one-sided relationship and build a genuine dialogue between West and East through the marriage of Arabic vocals and instrumentation with double bass, surf guitar and occasional programmed beats. Road to Damascus floats along to some beautiful vocals from Lubana Al Quntar, stirring violins from the Pan Arab Strings of Damascus and rippling scales courtesy of Syrian qanun (zither) player Abdullah Chhadeh. But Syriana is a fluid project and the group that performed at WOMAD in July featured artists from Palestine and Algeria (Chhadeh was reluctant to tour).

The album is stripped-down and almost exclusively instrumental, at times feeling like a film soundtrack, as Arabic strings combine with sinister electric guitar. Highlights include the eerie, panoramic ‘Road to Damascus’, which at live gigs is set to some wonderfully captured images of Damascus’ ancient souk from Italian Nico Piazza, and ‘Al Araby, featuring Al Quntar's swooning vocals. But it's the uptempo ‘A Black Zil’ that is perhaps the stand-out track, set to rollicking darbuka (goblet drum) and qanun before Talvin Singh-like beats break in halfway through. A beautiful, surprising album, it is fittingly dedicated to a man who did more to promote East-West musical understanding than most, the sorely missed Charlie Gillett.