To listen to Dancing Drums is to imagine the bazaars and markets of Bombay being seismically unsettled by the drums and the bass of sample freaks and ambidextrous turntabla-ists. It is an album that provides any number of routes to an infinite amount of journeys and has been described as "an epic of explosive percussion and crafty melody lines" (Q).

Badmarsh's method of subverting breakbeats shares much in common with his countryman Naseem Hamed's form of facial embellishment. Breakbeats are coaxed, pulped, rearranged and deranged. An underground drum'n'bass DJ and pirate radio head honcho, he has all the street credentials needed to bring the rawness and the foresight which keeps Dancing Drums a thousand steps ahead of the pack.

Containing their reworking of the Dave Pike Set's Mathar, which brings the Sixties sitar ethic to the big beat fin de siecle panic, Shri and Badmarsh's first collaborative effort for Outcaste Records bridges decades, genres and cultures. As new forms become old norms and progressive beatmastery overshadows the soul of songwriting, Shri and Badmarsh have achieved the constantly craved yet rarely attained accolade of creating an album that is intense without the pretense, and funky without the superficiality.