On first examination, Secretly Famous might be considered over–ambitious, setting out as it does to include the full gamut of Arab musical styles and genres. It would be easy for the product of such broad inclusion to sound like a badly conceived and disjointed sampler but, as it turns out, this is far more organic than you might imagine, with each successive track complementing its predecessor without any noticeably jarring effect. Incorporating Moroccan and Egyptian tunes, Arab vocals, ney and mizmar flutes and ouds, with darbuka drums to drive it all along behind a deep bass groove, the music here might best be described as Arab dub. On occasion, it brings to mind some of the more Middle Eastern flavored work of English dub–meister, Jah Wobble; elsewhere it sounds like the sort of thing you might end up dancing to in a hip Cairo nightclub.

There is an array of Arab styles here: belly dance tunes like Saidi the Man, funky oud Rai workouts like Oud Funk and trance dance pieces like Sufi Disco. It is just a shame that annoying titles like Indian Dope (yes, it's got a sitar) and Reggada (OK, it's a reggae tune) and even Kurdish Delight, do little to help you take the music seriously. Titles such as these just give the impression that no one could be bothered spending ten minutes thinking up more imaginative alternatives. Perhaps the target market is simply someone who wants to buy a Middle East–flavored dance album that covers all the bases. In that case why doesn't The Spy from Cairo (a.k.a: multi–instrumentalist and studio wizard Zeb, originally Moreno Visini) just call himself 'The Oud Dude' and be done with it?

Thankfully, the music is actually far better than the pedestrian titles might suggest, and The Spy from Cairo/Zeb is clearly a talented musician with a good ear and eclectic tastes. There's an underlying groove that runs throughout this recording that makes Secretly Famous quite compelling. It is all very danceable too, which is really the point: hip–shaking, shoulder–wobbling, arms in the air––Aiwa!