Reviews Pop An avant garde American jazzman is rolling out a lumbering dub bass. A Japanese beatnik James Bond is playing intermittent, Les Dawson-like chords of brilliantly discordant melody. A mustachioed Indian singer in a gold outfit is singing like a Bollywood star while a drummer beats out breathtaking drum 'n' bass rhythms. Members of the audience leap to their feet to punch the air in approval.

This is part of a new Barbican series, called Only Connect. And it is connections that have propelled Talvin Singh, a blue-haired Brick Lane wonderboy, to Mercury Prize winning fame with his album, OK, with its Jamaican dub and Indian classical and British jungle mix. Tonight is his attempt to recreate the album live, with all its international collaborators up there on stage. American Bill Laswell is on bass. Ryuichi Sakamoto strolls to his Steinway grand mid-song. Talvin wears trainers. The cinematic Indian dub of Traveller is a tidal wave of a beginning. Chandresheker, one of India's finest electric violinists, comes on for Butterfly, while drummer Karsh Kale weaves frantic drum 'n' bass rhythms. Singh's whirlwind tablas duel with Shankar Mahedevan's quavering singing on Eclipse. But in a dull middle section, Singh's tabla and drum 'n' bass - take over and even the presence of Cleveland Watkiss, here as jazz keyboardist and jungle MC, can't save us from forests of turgid dub. A drum solo is a drum solo in any language. It is still a stunning show, with the sense of something genuinely new, that closes on a euphoric high. The stuffy old 70s foyer is taken over by the Anohka jungle sound system. Barbican staff scuttle nervously about, perhaps bemused by the sight of their audience, rather than their performers. Talvin Singh's tablas are ringing the changes.