This miraculous album has been the most played record on Saturday Night for the past two months. Released in France in October, it's due out in the UK in March.

Mamani Keita is a Malian singer based in Paris where she has been a back up vocalist while also being featured as guest lead singer on a number of exceptional records, including Sarala by Hank Jones meets Cheick-Tidiane Seck and the Mandinkas (Verve, 1995), Tama (Real World, 1999) and Sigui by Djelimady Tounkara (Label Bleu, 2001). Marc Minelli is a new name to me, but turns out to have recorded several albums as a singer-songwriter. Together, they prove that old adage about the whole being more than the sum of its parts.

It has become a familiar strategy to conjure a hybrid music out of disparate elements, but never have so many been so adroitly combined as here - syncopated dance beats, jazz-flavoured trumpet, piano and sax, wailing Malian backing vocals and Mamani's raw voice are all corralled into ten distinctly different songs. No two songs have the same kind of beat, and each has its own melody which soon becomes familiar. 'Abdoulayi Djodo' (track 2) was the first to grab attention, but 'Macary' is the current favourite, with the French language 'Demisenoun' waiting in the wings.
This kind of music very often works much better in clubs than the living room, but these songs are so strong, and the rhythm programming so sophisticated, the record sounds fine at normal volumes.

Philip Ryalls notes a parallel with the sound and approach of Suba on his album Sao Paulo Confessions, and it's safe to recommend this album to anybody who fell under Suba's spell. The duo supported St Germain at the Albert Hall last November, and although it was slightly bizarre to hear so many voices with only one singer in view, the strength of their songs was confirmed.

Having already proved its strength as an import, this is destined to be among the top five UK releases for 2002