World jazz may be the big hope of every major record label with a jazz department, but Night Ark, the quartet that mixes jazz, electronics and Armenian folk music, is no convenient slice of ethnic tourism. Its members are Ara Dinkjian, who specialises in the oud, an Arabic stringed instrument; dynamic percussionist/singer Arto Tuncboyaciyan; American jazzers Jim Beard (keys) and Tim Lefebvre (bass). The band represents one of the best blends of rootsy materials and hard-nosed jazz improvisation to have emerged in recent years.

A freewheeling looseness is part of the band's secret. Somebody dropped a fork during the hushed and spacious electronic opening to the evening, and though the band didn't drop a stitch musically, they all unconcernedly cracked up. Tuncboyaciyan's singing then entered - a clear, insistent chanting, flickering with microtonal yodellings, gradually reinforced by his own drumming.

Those who thought that Night Ark were the kind of world jazz ensemble in which the jazz was a splash of opportunistic colouring on a canvas of formal ethnic set-pieces were soon put right. Out of a faster, dance-like theme in which Beard's keyboards resembled a marimba and Dinkjian's jaunty oud lines were resolved in the bustle of Lefebvre's bass phrasing, an almost McCoy Tyner-like jazz piano group emerged. Tuncboyaciyan also indicated that the distance between his culture and Latin America's was narrower than might be expected, as he appled dynamic hand-drumming and a kind of whispering Armenian scat to a samba-like vibe. Front-runners in an overcrowded world music market.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible