Daby and Skip are daring paring

The billing suggested a set promoting their new collaborative record Call My Name. Surprisingly they didn’t offer a song from the album. Instead they delivered a weird but rewarding hybrid show, where Touré played a frenetic and wonderfully catchy clutch of songs from his earlier album Stereo Spirit then invited Macdonald to join him on stage. The bluesman, dapper in grey waistcoat and sharp strides and a black reversed baseball cap, oozed charisma. He plugged his guitar in, let fly a distorted riff and cackled into the microphone: "Welcome to our world. It’s going to be so different."

That might have been a good gear change, because what had passed before with Daby’s trio had seemed a bit like the Police reborn with a young Bob Marley (he even quoted Get Up Stand Up at one point) singing in a foreign tongue. Instead, Macdonald simply jammed along, throwing a lick here a wah-wah blues scale there, but nothing extraordinary. Nor was the show proof of Touré’s T-shirt slogan that "music is the weapon of the future".

There were some great percussive moments, where Touré beat his guitar and put the rhythm patterns on a loop for his drummer to set syncopated patterns against. It was catchy but undermined by Touré’s repeated insistence to add long codas with call and response audience "participation". This might have worked in a stadium but jarred in the intimate Jazz Cafe.

A mixed bag but with flashes of inspiration.

Daby Toure, Skip McDonald