Nitin Sawhney has often been too clever and too esoteric for his own good. He is influenced by a vast array of styles - from Indian classical music through to R&B, trip-hop, jazz and flamenco - and the result has sometimes been something of a mess, particularly in his live shows.

All those influences and more are on display on his sixth album. This time, however, the music mostly succeeds, thanks to the cool, confident production work and Sawhney's more direct, compelling approach.

The often thoughtful, soulful songs are on such themes as racism and growing up, and feature a batch of singers, including Kevin Mark Trail (who has also worked with the Streets), Natacha Atlas and Reena Bhardwaj.

Say Hello is breathy, the Indian-influenced Heer is gently driving and Fragile Wind is a subtle trip-hop ballad. They didn't need to be dressed up with quite so many archive fragments (Enoch Powell, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther King and so on) - though switching from the Iraq war to Shakespeare is certainly ambitious.