Diagnostic Mis'Ter Productions ***

There's something almost endearing about a musician who can start an album with new-age piano noodling and end it with a screaming heavy- metal guitar solo. Lebanese- French trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf follows his own wayward muse with refreshing honesty, as if he's using music to work through his identity issues (which, as a classically trained jazz trumpeter, born in Beirut and raised in Paris, he probably is). The result is like a soundtrack to some chaotic French road movie, with everything from Cuban montunos and hip-hop to Arab microtonality and electro-jazz glimpsed through the windows of a speeding car. It's a curiously compelling white- knuckle ride that will further enhance Maalouf's reputation. But, in all the confusion, it can be hard to locate the trumpeter himself – sometimes literally – and one senses that with his identity crisis out of his system, he may now be ready to be himself. ibrahimmaalouf.com