Former Grateful Dead drummer and world music enthusiast Mickey Hart teams up again with tabla master Zakir Hussein (the two also collaborated on the landmark albums DIGA RHYTHM BAND and PLANET DRUM) for 2007's GLOBAL DRUM PROJECT. Like those albums, Hart and Hussein enlist the help of some of the world's great percussionists, including Nigerian talking drum player Sikiru Adepoju and Puerto Rican conguero Giovanni Hidalgo.
The album isn't quite the skull-rattling experience one might expect. Instead, the grooves percolate and seduce, building trance-inducing layers that evoke, variously, the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia. The presence of electronics is also strong, as Hart layers the samples and digital effects over the organic bedrock created by his cadre of master drummers.
