Album: Various artists<!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

World Circuit Presents... World Circuit

The World Circuit label's 20-year rise to prominence has been built on producer/boss Nick Gold's ear for a crossover sound, his ability to spin off side-projects from a central core, and his friendship with Ry Cooder, whose Midas touch has been instrumental, so to speak, in enabling the label's two biggest successes, the Buena Vista Social Club and Ali Farka Touré. As this two-CD compilation shows, the label has made a virtue out of the stylistic hybrids once frowned upon by ethnic purists, be it Cooder and Farka Touré's blissful blues-based blending of African mandé and Hawaiian guitar figures in "Soukora" or Cachaito's mix of loping Cuban funk with Hugh Masekela's trumpet in "Tumbanga". It's interesting to note how closely the hypnotic background vocal repetitions of Oumou Sangare's "Mogo Te Diya Bee Ye" echo those of Guillermo Portabales' "El Carretero", performed half a century earlier. There's not a duff track here, though my favourite has to be the previously unreleased "Song 4" by "Diva of the Desert" Dimi Mint Abba, a sublime blend of scurrying percussion and vocal melisma.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Song 4', 'Soukora', 'Tumbanga', 'El Carretero', 'Tapha Niang'