How do you try and pin down someone who always seems to be several steps ahead of the game? Instead of writing about IG Culture's new NSM album Turn It Up, I was tempted to ask our editor to post up this quote from a recent interview and leave it at that, because it goes a long way to articulating the thinking behind one of the most influential, original, and often unfathomable talents making music in the UK today.

Talking about IG is never going to be a simple process, because he is a producer of music that often defies definition. Any artist who goes by a football team of pseudonyms like Quango, Son of Scientist, Likwid Biskit, the Likwid Continual Space Motion Ope-Ra, Blacktonez, New Sector Movements, Da One Away, and Murky Waters among others, is not going to be easily summed up! Oh yes, and as well as being a prolific producer and arranger, he is a also a founding member, resident and Microphone Controller of one of Know The Ledge's favourite clubs Co-Op, and one of the main honchos behind West London's Main Squeeze record label.

If I try and think back to when I first heard the sounds of IG Culture it would have been through 4 Hero and Phil Asher's R-Solution radio show on Kiss FM in the late 90s. Then in 2000 I picked up a Far Out compilation called Misturada 4 (remixes of the Friends From Rio 2 album) remixed by cutting edge London artists including Seiji & G Force, 4 Hero, and our man IG Culture. At the time anything that had 4 Hero on it I snapped up, as this was (and still is) a guaranteed seal of approval. However, one song on the album really stood out - Cravo e Canela originally penned by one of Brazil's great songwriters, Milton Nascimento, and re-treated for 2000 by IG Culture. From then on, I was a convert to this sound and looked out for anything that had the name IG Culture on it, another guaranteed seal of approval. A year or so later I picked up another Brazilian remix by IG Culture, this time shaking up Da Lata's Pra Manha. A moody, stirring classic, it remains a favourite of mine to this day.

A man of many masks, who casts his musical net far and wide, it's paradoxical that in 2004 with NSM, IG has produced what is perhaps his most accessible work to date. Not that it doesn't have its complexities, of course. It's a fitting scenario for the artist who says "People like to get confused!". Someone looking for a definitive "broken beat" or Co-Op album will not find it with the new NSM LP . But then, they'd be missing the point. If anything this is a soul album. Imagine a fusion of classic forms and styles and beats with broken edges all brought together with a serious twist of electronic know-how, and you will have an idea of what it sounds like.

This is the landmark work of a versatile and rapidly maturing talent. The tracks range from down-tempo and smooth, such as the rich and lovely Don't Say It and Sho you Right, through Ce'Cile's agitated dancehall antics in Big It Up and the neo-punk soul of Heat It Up, to tunes that are more beats-based, such as Broken and Love, Speed, Movement. Tha Fame, a tongue-in-cheek cockney outing about the perils of success, firmly places the album on a London map. The album holds together brilliantly as a whole, as was clearly shown by the group's sizzling live perfomance at the Jazz Cafe last month.

Mainstream? Perhaps. Smoother, and therefore somewhat "easier" than his other outings, Turn it Up should bring IG's talents to a wider audience than that of the legions of jazz and beats fans that have been on board for some years already. And it's about time - as long as he promises to keep some of those extraordinary alter-egos alive and kicking!