Brooklyn Raga Massive has emerged over the last few years as a forward-thinking collective devoted to exploring diverse sounds inspired by Indian classical music. Previous projects have included a ragainflected tribute to the music of John and Alice Coltrane and last year’s critically lauded album, Terry Riley In C. Now the collective’s drummer, Sameer Gupta, has struck out on his own, with help from other members of the tribe, to bring us this solo album, on which he seeks to meld sounds drawn from his dual Indian and American heritage. The primary influence is the kind of mellow, cosmic funk-fusion favoured by Jean Luc Ponty in the mid-1970s – laid-back grooves with fat basslines and lashings of Fender Rhodes – but with the added spice of Indian Carnatic violin and bansuri flute flying off into hyper-agile flights of microtonal invention. If it’s perhaps a little too slick in places, the last couple of tracks convincingly up the stakes: ‘Run For The Red Fort’ is a blast of dark fusion with tumbling, propulsive drums and thick synth squelch; while the 11-minute ‘Prog-Raag Bhimpalasi’ builds out of a nebulous improvised cloud into epic, driving prog with sitar and saxophone sparring for supremacy.