Screaming Formula One car engines are not helping Nitin Sawhney rehearse a particularly intricate piece of music. 'It's definitely very surreal, trying to rehearse delicate arrangements in a tent when you have these cars whizzing past,' he says, speaking on the phone from a hotel in the middle of Singapore's Grand Prix street circuit, on the eve of last month's race.
The high octane razzmatazz of one of the world's most corporate sports doesn't sit comfortably with the general impression of Sawhney as a classically trained musician renowned globally for the infusions of spirituality, subtlety and anthropological awareness he transmits through his music.
Yet there are many sides to a career which has spanned eight albums and numerous scores and soundtracks. He has embraced everything from music to comedy, garnered worldwide acclaim and successfully bridged the dance floor with the orchestra pit.
In Singapore to play a DJ set, he is a swirl of contradictions as he discusses his latest album, London Undersound, which contains a series of collaborations which attempt to evoke life in London in the 21st century, characterised by what Sawhney perceives as greater racial tensions and divides created by government reactions to global terrorism.
The most prominent sound resonating subconsciously through the project is that of the eight gunshots fired by police on July 22, 2005, that killed innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground.
The case of mistaken identity has come to embody the culture of fear that has distorted life in many cities around the world, but most notably in London, according to Sawhney.
He regards the British capital as a place where mistrust and racial tension are increasingly percolating through the surface while a proliferation of security cameras monitors every day life from above.