"Are you ready to come with us to Africa, Basingstoke?" Bellowed by a giant, dreadlocked member of Senegalese hip-hop trio Daara J to a primarily middle-aged suburban English crowd, this may be one of the most incongruous sentences ever uttered. Indeed, the Anvil, an all-seated civic centre in a town known as Doughnut City due to its large number of roundabouts, was an equally unlikely venue in which to find French Algerian outlaw rocker Rachid Taha and the tribal collective Tinariwen, who come from the Sahara. Yet this is where the British leg of the African Soul Rebels Tour began, a chance for the Wrasse Records label to sidestep the worthy term "world music" and highlight their hottest, most contemporary acts.

The crowd applauded politely to such cerebral exoticism. Then the stage was overrun by the rampant Daara J who jumped, danced, and rapped to a frenetic mix of reggae, ragga, hip-hop and African music spliced together by their DJ. Their exhortations that the crowd perform dance steps and sing along to tracks such as Bopp Sa Bopp and Blaze met with hesitant compliance. "Glad I renewed my gym subscription," muttered one crowd-member in his fifties, as he shook his hands in the air.

-Thomas H Green