" data-original-title="" title="">Dan Siegel's music has "contemporary chic" written all over it. Having worked a smooth seam for decades and crafted a fair amount of music for television and film, he knows a thing or two about putting together a tight arrangement, pulling from different stylistic sources, contracting the right players for a job, and producing a record with nary a rough edge to be seen. All of that knowledge and all of those skills were put to good use in the act of creating Origins.

With a band of L.A. session greats in tow, Siegel delivers ten polished numbers tied to different ideals within a similar sound and mood scheme. On "Rite Of Passage" he establishes the dynamic of this project, exploring a form of cool-headed funk that shifts to double-time in its final act; with "After All" Siegel stares at the stars in the night sky, inviting Andalusian allure into his glossy designs through the presence of wordless vocals and acoustic guitar; in "Arabesque" he manages to miraculously turn wistfulness into a tool of seduction; and during the album-closing title track he injects a series of bluesy elements into the mix.

The musicianship across these ten tracks is top notch—uber drummer