Italian pianist Farao's career to date has seen him swing hard with the likes of Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts and Jack DeJohnette but this latest venture, as the title suggests, takes him into a world much broader than post-bop. In industry terms this is the ‘urban’ project with rap, R&B and electronica the predominant flavours in the mix. The presence of big name guests, from Snoop Dogg to Marcus Miller, may boost the appeal across markets but they actually end up creating more imbalance than coherence, especially as the more interesting harder edge of what they do so well is softened by predominantly high gloss sounds in the mix. In fact, a major part of the problem is the prevailing blandness of the programming and beats that lack the thrust to take the songs, a few of which are not unappealing, beyond wallpaper radio fare. Farao's talent as well as the quality of the line-up save this from being an entirely second rate affair, but the material and production are far too pedestrian to bring to fruition a project that has the grandiose aim to both ‘explore new horizons’ and ‘break down all kinds of boundaries’.