It's never been possible to separate music from society, as if musicians live in ivory towers and never read the newspapers. Nor is it so simple any more as to plot a linear course for popular music, and watch the headlong rush from one bridgehead to the next. The tyranny of fashion has withered, and just as street style has fragmented into 'mix 'n' match', so musicians of the last twenty years have taken more to 'networking', than trying to be first kid on the block to a new sound. In the confined space that is popular culture, interesting tangents soon ricochet off the ceiling.

Where the action increasingly is, and the conflict and counterpoint most interesting, is the intersections. As any lottery ticket buyer will tell you, as few as six elements can result in endless possibilities...

Alex Gray of The Mighty Truth talks in these terms about the phenomenon of 'trip hop', and the extent to which it is a media fantasy. Like jungle, dub and punk before it, it's more of an attitude than a discernible musical style, and as such may be brought to bear on any number of original sources. All the more elusive and chimerical for the media, and all the more illicit and enticing for DJs and musicians. Just as music explodes in one dimension, it implodes in another, and the collective unconscious spawns a new set of values. Out of the vortex comes a new mode of creativity, its centrifugal force yielding crosscurrents as offbeat as Portishead, where indie collides with hip-hop.

Likewise with Acid Jazz, whose '70s retro' mentality is increasingly giving way to a more avant garde, ambient ethos. As one half of The Night Trains, Alex Gray and Julian Bates took their genre seriously, with uptempo, heavily-sequenced tunes like 'Blow Out', which owed rather less to the past than many of their label-mates.

Now, as The Mighty Truth, Alex and Julian are forging new directions in jazz-funk and ambient dub.

Their album, City To The Sea has been two years in the making; a time which saw many friends and guest musicians pass through the doors of their Holloway studio, Gracelands. Each brought some cultural and spiritual baggage, which Alex and Julian usually sought to tap. 'The Connection' gives full rein to the beat-poetry of Dwight Clark, enjoining us to, "honour all life as holy", while the gentle Tanzanian timbre of Willy Wondera lends 'Wandering World', a touching sincerity.

'Rebirth', and 'Heavy Knowledge' plough a jazz-funk vibe reminiscent of The Young Disciples and date from the early sessions, but each has been remixed for 90s tastes.

Julian and Alex's later instrumental improvisations draw on the vocabulary of acid and techno, with the memorably-titled, 'Is It A Wizard Or A Blizzard', upping the BPMs with a squelchy TB303. Loops, and cut-up loops are The Mighty Truth's stock in trade, and an effective counterpoint to the idiosyncratic range of vocoders, clavinets and analogue sounds which pepper the album.

The classical cello intro to 'Wandering World', is a tease, while the haunting piano chords of 'Blowing For The Sixth Sign', reminded me of Joe Jackson's 'Stepping Out'. Todd Rundgren's 'Don't You Ever Learn?' is reworked with vocalist Funmi, whose tender, 70s phrasing evokes Roberta Flack. Alex's brother Nigel supplied the guitar parts, while Dave Priseman's trumpet solo lends a hint of Miles Davis to the jazz-fusion title track.

'Gracelands' is an ironic epithet (akin to calling your bedsit 'Manderley'), and dates from a rudimentary stage in the studio's history. (Amongst the fallacies that should be laid to rest are that it's a bad pun of Gray, Alex's surname, or that he and Julian were chasing business from Elvis impersonators.) Today, the name's nearer the mark, and suggestive of the spiritual journey on which The Mighty Truth are engaged.

It was a sweaty summer jam session which inspired the concept of City To The Sea, a city boy's flight of fancy which turned into a muse. Alex likens it to a first glimpse of the sea on a trip to the coast. It's his metaphor for the truth, stretching out before you, shimmering like a mirage. But isn't it better to travel hopefully than to arrive? Truth, as they say, tends to sit on the lips of dying men.

City To The Sea (CD/LP) is released on Tongue & Groove Records on May 8th.

You'll have to buy City To The Sea for the original mix of 'The Miro', but here's an alternate take from Alex and Julian, 'especially for you'.