Worldwide

Now that the word 'eclectic' has been devalued to the extent that any DJ who plays Orbital back-to-back with Funkadelic is seen as some kind of radical selecta savant, it's good to be reminded that there's at least one person out there who actually deserves the label.

Gilles Peterson has been, in his various stints as mover, club and radio DJ, Talkin Loud supremo and shaker, a prime catalyst in the alchemy of styles that has thrown up so many beat-iful mongrels in the past decade.

His highly ambitious Worldwide radio show, broadcast to 12 countries (and many more via the internet) has become a safe house for the great and the greater in black music, and this double CD compilation serves as a sampler for some of its highest moments.

This being Gilles, across the 25 tracks on offer we run the gauntlet of soul, jazz, R...B, D...B, funk, hip-hop, dub, house, Brazilica, Balearica, loungecore and all strains in between, with incautious disregard for genre boundaries. It's all mixed unobtrusively, and there's barely a duff track in the whole bunch.

On the 'AM' side, representing the floor-ripping contingent, we get tunes like Pepe Bradock's choicest cut of moody epic house, 'Deep Burnt' and the filthy durty street-soul of Roy Ayers or George Benson's classic 'The Ghetto'.

On the 'PM' disc, and representing the roach-ripping contingent, we get a whole lot of smoke, and more than enough fire to keep up - any more horizontal and you'd be the happiest spirit level in the world. Kelis and John Martyn are the best-known of the bunch, the former showing the dreamy flipside to her 'I Hate You' schtick and the latter being supremely, well, Martyn-y on 'Solid Air'.

Everything here is head music that doesn't require a degree in advanced maths to enjoy, and is for the most part required listening for anyone with the faintest interest in the heritage or the future of the repetitive beats hydra.