Norwegian keyboardist and composer Jon Balke and his international collective Siwan won high acclaim for their genre-blurring ECM debut back in 2009. Hardly surprising: not only did the project point to some fascinating links between Arab, Andalusian classical and European Baroque music, it also sought to make the fusion of their soundworlds thoroughly contemporary. This follow-up album, which sees Mona Boutchebak replace Amina Alaoui on vocals, does a similar thing with equal boldness, again placing Balke and his avant-garde collaborators alongside Bjarte Eike’s Barokksolistene apparently in pursuit of an answer to the question: “How would Europe and the rest of the world have developed if the three religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) had managed to co-exist in the aftermath of Al-Andalus? ” That’s quite a big question for any group of musicians to take on, but with Nahnou Houm (which translates as ‘We Are Them’) Balke and his collaborators certainly make a compelling case that such investigations can produce remarkable music. Ambient electronics blend with harpsichord and Baroque strings; the words are provided by the likes of Lope de Vega, Ibn al-Zaqqaq and St John of the Cross.