TABLA BEAT SCIENCE

Producer/mixman Bill Laswell has been known to irk purists and entice others: He's reworked Miles Davis' '70s archives and reconfigured Irish and Cuban music. Here, he focuses on Indian percussion, freely blending intricate Hindustani-inspired tabla playing, Indo-electro goods from Talvin Singh, and old-fashioned drum-kit playing into savory, energetic ambient music. But the real hero is tabla wizard Zakir Hussain, who makes the whole thing fly and renders stylistic quibbles moot. B+