Wild Serenade [Audio CD] DuOud

Short-listed for a BBC Radio 3 World Music Award, DuOud's Wild Serenade is hammering home the fact that the oud is one of the most important instruments in the world. The word itself means "wood" and this pear-shaped, fretless, short-necked lute--the ancestor of the guitar--is what gives the music of the Middle East its characteristically plangent sound.

But what DuOud do with the oud is altogether more interesting. For in this group, two North African lute players team up with a violinist, a cellist and a percussionist and plunder the gadgetry of the studio to create effects which are sometimes Spanish, sometimes North Indian and sometimes pure Paris disco.

The 11 tracks on this CD are a superb showcase for what the oud can do when it's in the hands of masters like Smadj and Mehdi Haddab: they can make it sound like a lone voice in the desert, or like the central figure in a swirling studio mix, but their virtuosity is never swamped by electronic effects. The Congo meets Algiers meets Delhi meets Paris: don't try to pin anything down, just let their heady momentum carry you along. --Michael Church