*** OFRA HAZA “Desert Wind” <i> Sire</i>

Lovely, exotic Yemenite Hebrew wailing meets the cold, insistent thump-thump-thump of techno-disco. An unreleased Malcolm McLaren cross-cultural pastiche? It’s certainly not that calculated, and moreover, Israeli singer Haza has all the international license she needs to mess with World Beat marriages, but her third American release does at times indeed have the slightly uncomfortable feel of one of McLaren’s exercises in unwieldy musical matrimony--it’s a forced union, not a natural one.

That said, “Desert Wind” still works well enough if you accept it on its own novelistic terms, which may or may not transcend time and further fine-tuning. About half the tracks work her decidedly non-Anglo phrasings and intonations into square-jawed English-language settings and sample-happy dance formats, but Haza offers up more traditional Yemenite folk fodder too; it’s all tasteful, tuneful and nicely mysterious, if not yet fully or organically realized.

In throbbing, bass-heavy “Inta” (as in “inta my heart”), the producers throw a little old-fashioned reverb on her typically “haunting” vocal mid-cut--and, presto, it’s as if there’s sand on the dance floor and elbow room from here to the next lonely dune.