The best summer album of 2010 comes from a bunch of British ethno-jazz mavericks and an iconoclastic academic with a passion for Iranian music. That might sound unlikely, but from the first sultry, slinky notes and drums of "Electricone," the heat is on, with the flute melodies swooping delightedly over the beat like small, darting birds. It's sizzling jazz braided through with plenty of Eastern promise.

But that's only to be expected from a collaboration between the inspired strangeness of the Heliocentrics, whose career has been spent beating at the edges of music, and the cult figure of multi-instrumentalist Dr. Lloyd Miller, a man who sees bebop and Persian music as part of the same continuum. It's an album where you can almost hear the players grinning with pleasure. The joy they take in playing together is palpable, pushing and challenging each other inside the loose structures they build. Of course, it wouldn't be a Lloyd Miller album without several Persian references, and they're most apparent on "Charhargah" and "Pari Ruu." But ultimately they're just a couple of stops on a warm global journey linked by jazz and improvisation. The long, soothing, gamelan tones of "Bali Bronze" and the Terry Riley-style… read more »