UNKNOWN to mainstream pop here, a superb home-grown broken-beats/nu-jazz duo named Cosa Nostra is making waves elsewhere. The two members are Dean, 31, and Kaye, 28.

The former is a full-time architect now based in Jakarta and the latter is a prominent saxophonist in the local lounge and dance-club circuit.

Kaye is a witty interviewee who can come across a little cocky to those who don't understand his musical passion. To wit: 'Honestly, we both hate the term nu-jazz, or even broken-beats. There's nothing new in nu-jazz and the smart aleck spelling just rubs me the wrong way. And broken-beats is just a fancy term for electronic music that draws heavily from the syncopated rhythm patterns of African and Latin American music updated for today's clubs.'

However, he concedes that 'labelling is a necessary evil'.

The 'necessary evil' seems redundant when one checks out the inspired duo's output since 2004.

Journey From - Cosa Nostra's debut - was dubbed a house track inspired by an Alice Coltrane bassline. It was followed by Spiritual Collaborations, an Afrobeat-inspired number. Last year, the duo came up with three tracks - Too Little Time, Back To Front and Flying featuring Emo, a seven-minute epic hybrid of Afro, broken-beats and house commissioned by the song's original artist Butti49 as a Cosa Nostra remix.

Earlier this year, the pair did a house tune with bits of Nancy Wilson vocals titled We'll Sort You Out! - like the rest, it was not for commercial release. More recently, their remix of the 1970s Brazilian group Os Originais Do Samba's Matriz Do Funk won overwhelming praise from label-heads and DJs overseas.

Paolo Scotti of Dej' vu Records calls it 'a pure killer for the dance floor', while Tom Wieland of Les Gammas gushed: 'Killa break your legs Brazil biz of Singa tune!!! DJ and radio support guaranteed! Respect.' In Singapore, the song received airplay on Lush 99.5FM.

The two met when Brandon P (now resident DJ of Zouk) booked them for an event some five years ago. Although both deejay music, Kaye, more the sax-player, claims that Dean is the one with a 'deep knowledge of leftfield music, be it vintage or modern' and calls him a real vinyl junkie.

Making music took a while to happen as Dean was studying in Perth to be an architect at that time. Upon his return after graduation, he contacted Kaye to help him run a music-portal website danceandsoul.com, where they now host a monthly 'radio show' called Public Nuisance. Creating tunes of their own was a natural by-product of hosting the website together.

They first went by the name of DeeKay but when Dean found an Australian restaurant with that name, they switched to Cosa Nostra, which means 'our thing' in Italian. A term perfectly suited to Dean and Kaye's sensibility, never mind that it was once adopted by an erstwhile Japanese acid-jazz group in the 1990s.

'Our thing' in Cosa Nostra's modus operandus, according to Kaye, translates thus: 'Dean usually plants a seed in my head. I'm left to grow it into a young plant. Then, we'll fight and argue over how we should graft other species of plants onto what we have. Then, we hope it won't become some evil man-eating specimen that will take over the world. Okay, maybe we do.'

Because of Dean's full-time job in Indonesia, their 'production meetings' take place over Internet chat.

How does Kaye feel about purists' refutation that jazz cannot go 'midi' (read: electronically created)?

'The tension that first created jazz and its constantly evolutionary nature will always be the ethos of jazz music. Now with electronic grooves and synths creeping into jazz (and vice versa), it's just another stage. Purists will always throw their hands up in the air... jazz music was the original club music. Jazz-heads should be happy jazz is making its way back to the clubs,' he snarls.

Not surprising then that Cosa Nostra's music credo is - 'Got soul, will dance'!