New York musician Shyndigg is clearly a man who thinks outside the box. The idea behind his band Digg Deep is to marry hip-hop beats with the classic songwriting values of Burt Bacharach, a supremely ambitious undertaking that he's dubbed Musique Noir. As if this wasn't already over-egging the pudding, he's thrown saxophones, violins, keyboards and two vocalists into the mix. The results are as messy as you would expect, but there's a good-humoured spirit running throughout InDiggNation that makes it a largely enjoyable listen. The 20 tracks includes re-workings of well-known songs by Billy Joel and Sly and the Family Stone, while on several of the original compositions Shyndigg's original vision shines gloriously through. A fine achievement.
