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Speed Caravan delivers its music with very much the feel of a live show - at breakneck pace and with furious energy. Haddab’s co-conspirators are bass player Pascal Teillet, Hermione Frank on electronics and vocalist Mohamed Boumar. Together with an eclectic array of special guests (a worldwide range of producers, DJs and vocalists, including Richard Archer of British indie band Hard-Fi and Spex MC from Asian Dub Foundation) the band piles a range of references and styles onto its core east-west sound: oud and guitar riffs, thundering beats and Arabesque melodies.

Haddab’s flair and Teillet’s bass playing are the driving force behind Speed Caravan’s punk attitude; no better example is a riotous version of The Cure’s ‘Killing an Arab’ sung by the rai-rebel himself, Rachid Taha. This is not the only western pop song covered with irony here: the band also tackles the Chemical Brother’s ‘Galvanise’, with vocal contributions from a number of rappers.

Haddab’s point seems to be that if western pop musicians can sample from other cultures at will (as the Chemical Brothers did with a Berber tune on ‘Galvanise’), then he can do the same back. However, the covers, alongside the other overtly political tracks (like ‘Dubai’, a devastating critique of the city’s absurd excesses, delivered in a heavy metal growl) aren’t the best tracks musically, even if their messages sum up the album’s mood.

For me, the instrumental tracks on Kalashnik Love find Speed Caravan’s music at its most immediate and startling. Haddab’s oud playing is a huge draw and although it doesn’t feature as much as it perhaps could, he plays with unrestrained abandon when it is, the instrument’s cascading lines more than holding its own in Speed Caravan’s busy soundscape.

On songs like ‘Parov Yegar Siroon Var’, Haddab’s spiky riffs spar with the bass and electronics, while the mind-blowing bassline on ‘Idemo Dalje’ would be at home in any nightclub. The glossy final track, a remix by Mo DJ of ‘Aissa Wah’ sums up Kalashnik Love: music overflowing with energy and ideas, if at times over-produced.