Rush Hour 3

If Tom Trago's debut album, Voyage Direct, was an impressive exercise in developing a signature style, then this sophomore set has clearly been designed to show the sheer scale of the Dutchman's growing ambition. It's almost as if Trago is setting out his stall: he's not just a simple disco/house fusionist, but a musical alchemist with more strings to his bow than a twelve-string player with an impressive collection of lutes, mandarins and sitars…

If the great players who stamped out Chicago's West Side as their cutting fields in the 1960's - Magic Sam, Freddie King, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Albert King - had pushed their command blues melodies into new harmonic territory, one result may have been Barry Levenson's The Late Show. Interestingly, ten of the fifteen tracks here are instrumentals, although as befitting a 21st century roots stylist, Levenson has a broader, all-encompassing approach than your average blues album. In this way, The Late Show is a concept album that mines all facets of the blues and blues-based guitar. From the Meters-like groove of Meters Runnin' to the Bill Frisell-shaped twang of Steel Life to the Bobby Womack and Curtis Mayfield church-derived Whole Lotta Blues and the Les Paul sweep of Charlie's Ride, Levenson lays down line after line of single notes whose harmonic backdrop is Grant Green and Kenny Burrell's boplicity.

The terrorist is by no means a new actor on the world stage. However, thanks to startling developments in military and communications technology, this perennial threat to freedom and security has taken a quantum leap forward during the past thirty years. In many cases, these vicious and determined men and women have supplanted nation states on the globe's "most wanted" list!