1 Giant Leap across cultures

By GRAHAM REID

Record producer Duncan Bridgeman and former Faithless member Jamie Catto took their recording equipment and headed out through 20 countries on what could only be called a spiritual quest as much as a musical one.

They were canny enough to document their journey for a DVD with a spin-off pilot programme for a possible television series (1 Giant Leap, TV One, Sunday, 10.40pm).

Quite when Western pop culture became infatuated with the exoticism of world music is difficult to determine. Some would point to George Harrison introducing Indian music to the Beatles in 1965 and by extension to the rest of the world after Norwegian Wood featured a sitar.

Certainly there have been some fairly shallow cultural tourists since, but other attempts to weave these disparate musical threads into something of depth and value have been enjoyable and enlightening, notably Brian Eno and David Byrne of Talking Heads bringing samples of spiritual music to their '81 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. It was like listening to a radio that flipped seamlessly between channels around the globe.

Now we have one of the better efforts at bringing musical cultures together by Bridgeman and Catto.

On paper the resulting album, 1 Giant Leap, looked like celebrity collision at the UN - REM's Michael Stipe, Robbie Williams, Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle, actor Dennis Hopper and writers Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut among others - but the music transcended early reservations and it is likely the album will turn up on many "best of the year" lists shortly.

The prospect of television programmes sounded even more appealing than the album, with exotic locations from Dakar to Bangalore, Auckland (for singer Whiri Mako Black) and Hopper's apartment in Hollywood.

The theme of the spiritual quest also allows the artists to discuss their notions of God, always against a colourful backdrop, and the singers to squat in fields or their living rooms to record their parts to the backing tracks Bridgeman and Catto had brought from Britain. Sort of Lonely Planet-meets-Jools Holland's Later.

Unfortunately the pilot is too shapeless to be interesting beyond late-night eye-candy, and the duo on the quest are rather too awestruck by some of the gurus and godpeople they meet to be informative.

Hold on to your armchair as they flit from one locale to another filming the mighty and mundane with enthusiasm and little discernment. A "Free Dirt" sign (in California?) is given equal time and as loving attention as a sunset in India. The result is a montage of images with little structure and purpose, but of course a great soundtrack.

It isn't without interest, even if you haven't heard the album. A chance meeting with Bhosle in Jaipur results in this great singer sitting in a garden outside a temple to record her divine and transcendental part.

Hopper, whose relevance to the concept goes unexplained, gets to babble impressively and biblically, Black is briefly but charmingly enthusiastic with beer bottle in hand, and Vonnegut gets to say, "Music proves the existence of God".

That was an intention of the project, and on record it largely succeeds. But this pilot shows only that pilots are necessary so television execs can say a polite, "Thank you, but no thank you".

It is enough to note that the following three programmes of the series have been pulled together by TVNZ from episodes on the currently available and more interesting DVD. Let's hope whoever edited them has a better filter than those behind the inchoate and confusing pilot.