Damon Albarn has claimed that his latest musical experiment, The Good, the Bad & the Queen, makes music rooted in the feel of the Westway and Notting Hill.

But Blur's leader and his prestigious backing band seemed right at home in the old East End, too, taking over an atmospheric sports hall normally used for staging boxing matches.

There was an old-fashioned, bow-tied compere telling bad jokes, and in his dark suit and top hat, Albarn looked like a Victorian undertaker.

Paul Simonon, once of the Clash, stalked the stage wielding his bass with menace, while a string quartet swayed beneath a backdrop of gasworks and railway bridges.

The band, augmented at times by the Lebanese rapper Eslam Jawaad and a man playing a saw on the evocative A Soldier's Tale, were fabulous, although Nigerian Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen's vast talent was rarely tapped.

The music was clearly Albarn's - songs such as Nature Springs calling to mind the haunting balladry he perfected with Blur's This is a Low, while Northern Whale's bouncy piano had something in common with his work in Gorillaz.

The music was uniformly leisurely paced, and as the songs were performed in the same order that they appear on the band's new album, there were few surprises.

With the deep dub bass, Albarn's slow-motion wail and a reeling fairground organ on tracks such as Three Changes, the sounds were steeped in portentous atmospherics but rarely stepped out of the shadows and grabbed the audience.

But if the evening didn't thrill, the music was still inventive and distinctive enough to tantalise with the thought of what the endlessly inspired Albarn will accomplish next.