That Gerardo Núñez is widely regarded as the most important innovator of flamenco music after the illustrious Paco de Lucia is saying something, especially when one considers that the 50-year-old Spaniard has absorbed other influences into his oeuvre (most notably the work of jazz titans Coltrane, Monk and Parker) and duly shaken up flamenco purists along the way. A concept album of sorts Travesía – which tells the story of the two African refugees he met when they washed up on a Spanish beach – sees him with a foot in both camps, sprinkling pop, funk, jazz and latin on a flamenco base with masterly ease. The history of flamenco is compared and contrasted to the route taken by these two men (now friends); tracks are lent added gravitas by the presence of Núñez's famed dancer wife Carmen Cortes, who claps and taps away on ‘No Hadia Podor Ser’, with its rollicking percussion and rapid-fire guitar lines. The epic, eponymous closer has it all: poetry, a choir and the Islamic call to prayer. Beautiful, intelligent stuff, and a delight from start to finish.