by Mark Espiner

LONDON'S having a love affair with Mali at the moment. What with the Damon Albarn project, Salif Keita and Angelique Kidjo all playing within weeks of each other. Last night Mamani Keita and Marc Minelli - with their fresh take on the African nation's music - carried the Mali torch to Hoxton. They didn't burn the house down, but there were some blistering moments in the varied, 80-minute set, all drawn from their album Electro Bamako.

Keita, a singer from Mali's music capital Bamako, teamed up with Parisian Minelli - who hasn't been to Mali - to make the record which fuses his electronica influences with Malian rhythms and melodies and Keita's astonishing voice. It took them three years. They successfully reproduced it live at The Shrine - the hip world-music club perfectly at home at the stylish Cargo.

But then reproducing it live isn't that hard when you are using pre-recorded backing tracks. Behind his keyboard in studied French-jazz cool, Minelli twiddled knobs and triggered samples while Keita oozed her charisma and liquid voice centre stage, slinkily dancing at the mic stand. To her left, a static but slightly craven looking Djelly Moussa effortlessly fluttered guitar riffs.

The trio hit the ground running with two fantastic bouncy numbers, the drum and bassy Macary and the swinging N'Ka Willy, which had the audience immediately hooked. But perhaps unsettled by the fact that the club was only half full, the next songs lost momentum and Keita looked uneasy. "Ca va?" she said. Minelli translated. "She doesn't like it that you aren't dancing," he added. But we were all loving her voice. She knows her instrument well - no more so than when she complemented Moussa's beautifully plaintive guitar, with drum loops silent.

Even if they couldn't quite sustain it, they gave Mali and electro music a new charge and, for a moment, really put the bam into Bamako.