While some of the tracks have beats and sounds that make them immediately identifiable as South East Asian, much like you can hear identifiable elements of funk in some jazz fusion projects, there are quite a few more where he's taken a couple of quantum leaps away from his source material to create something new. However, in order to ensure that listeners are able to appreciate, as much as possible, what he has created, Haque builds up to those pieces by beginning the disc with songs containing elements of either rhythm or melody that we can identify with. It's like he's showing us the various stages he went through in working with the music in order to develop his final sound.
Whether it's the track that leads off the disc, "Big Bhangra", with its insistent, tabla and kanjira driven beat that evokes the pulsating rhythm that propels dancers across the screen of a Bollywood musical, or "The Chant", incorporating sitar and violin to flavour the melody, the tracks at the beginning of the disc introduce the listener to the various elements that are used in the traditional music. However, even with these tunes he and the band are starting to expand and develop those aspects and give you an indication of the direction he will taking the music in.
Somehow or other, even at this stage, the music doesn't seem like a fusion of sounds, where one has been welded onto the other. Instead it feels like Haque and his band are taking individual elements - as described above - and seeing how they interact with the band's regular sound in order to develop something new. It's like they are asking themselves what does a sitar do to the melody line of a song and how can we create that feel without actually using its sound? Of course, as these songs are in of themselves great pieces of music, the music is nowhere near as clinical as that sort of description makes it sound. However, as we progress further into the recording and the band is pared back to only its original membership, we begin to feel the Punjabi influence more than actually hear Punjabi sounds in the music.
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