Natacha Atlas Mixes East, West on Ayeshteni

May 7 -- Natacha Atlas has a multicultural lineage that lives up to her name. The daughter of a Jewish father and Muslim mother, the Belgian-born songstress grew up in a Moroccan neighborhood in Brussels before moving to London. She currently calls Cairo home. People often guess at her heritage, and no surprise, they often guess wrong.

"There are a lot of things that have flown around over the years, and they're not all right," she says, referring to printed biographies that claimed she was based in Washington, D.C., as well as Algeria.

Atlas doesn't fault those who incorrectly identify her heritage. She once described herself and her heritage as a "human Gaza Strip."

"That was back when there was still a little bit of confusion of identity," she says. "Now for me that's much more consolidated within myself so I do see the duality between the occident and the orient every day, and I'm much more relaxed about it than I was."

Atlas sees another reason for the misconceptions surrounding her. "It's understandable in a way because my profile is not that high," she says.

That could all change soon as Atlas is releasing her fourth CD, Ayeshteni, tomorrow. Building upon the blend of traditional Arabic music and dub-heavy mixes that she first explored with Transglobal Underground, Atlas's new disc is a compelling mix.

"Ayeshteni is more integrated between the occidental side, the more textural side, using recording techniques to almost sculpt the oriental side," she says of the CD's East-meets-West nature. "You use the tools of the Western, advanced studio to augment everything else."

Like her past work, the new CD relies on traditional Arabic scales and instruments like the oud (a lute-like instrument) and mizmar (a bagpipe-sounding wind instrument).

"I think this album is actually more full-bodied sounding than what I'd done previously," she says. "I think it's very warm."

While the title of the CD ("It means 'You gave me life'") and the Arabic language might make all of this sound too exotic for some folks in the Western world to grasp, Atlas manages to make music that is surprisingly accessible while retaining its inherent allure.