No Ground Under is the soundtrack to a passport battering journey through the dirty back alleys of dance music. Ghislain Poirier has built his reputation with blog distributed mixes of African hip-hop and gritty bootleg remixes of favourites from the States and UK. Though Poirier doesn’t have to venture into the wilds for his inspiration, the Montreal based producer draws on influences from local elements in the form of the city’s French speaking community of immigrants from Haiti, Senegal, Algeria and other areas.

With the frenzied explosion of the musical blogosphere, all of a sudden foreign and obscure sounds are accessible without trekking anywhere more dangerous than your nearest internet cafe. From Brazilian baile funk to Angolan kuduro to Parisian blog house and London dubstep, genres are still closely associated with geography but practically every new sonic innovation is immediately made available to DJs and blog-crawlers the world over.

Poirier has the advantage of both the net and his musical home turf. Québec is almost a nation within Canada and this record, as well as Poirier’s regular club nights, provide the modern soundtrack for his multicultural Francophone audience. The similarly international M.I.A may have ‘more records than the KGB’ and a globe trotting array of producers sure to raise FBI eyebrows, but Poirier easily trumps her when it comes to truly threatening beats. His stuff hits hard enough to punch holes in the earth, connecting Canada straight to Jamaica, Brazil or Africa.

MC Face-T grabs the mic for two cuts, including the manic dancehall clatter of the first single ‘Blazin’. His other offering ‘No More Blood’ is a steadier, political beast. Both Face-T tracks are reprised as remixes at the end of the album; including a mix from Modeselektor, the German producers much-beloved by both TTC and Thom Yorke. Modeselektor strip the frantic pace from ‘Blazin’ leaving a burnt out shell of wriggling bass with the repeated chorus. Also delivering on the vocal front is Zulu, with his advice that “when the world breaks down” we ‘Go Ballistic’, repeating the title chant with vocal cord shredding energy throughout.

The French rapping, sliced horn samples of ‘Jusqu’en Haut’ and electro pulses and rapid fire scratching of ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ could be missing tracks from a TCC record. While instrumental tracks such as ‘Diaspora’ and ‘Hit and Red’ take a more traditionally Ninja Tuned approach, mashing rattling beats and electronic experimentation. ‘Hit and Red’s spacey beats and alien wisps of noise betray an Aphex influence, while ‘One Hand Can’t Clap’ sounds like the tribal drumming of alien tribes. ‘Exils’ rubs Abdelhak Rahal’s wailing violin strings against a blunt beat. However, ‘It’s War War War’ uses the tired machine-gun-as-rapid-beat effect before venturing into dub territories. ‘City Walking’ breaks from the global beats to detour into comparatively less adventurous underground hip-hop, with Abdominal MC on the mic.

It’s far from Zen, but this record is yet another quality release from the reliable Ninja Tune label. Ethnomusicologists have dubbed this sound ‘global ghettotech’, though it’s sure to splinter into new micro genres with each new release. Save yourself the semantic headache, but make sure you explore ‘No Ground Under’. It’s well worth it.