Just to clarify: that’ll be the Tufnell Park Dome, not its more illustrious Greenwich cousin. But even this Dome was a bit of a strange choice of venue – I think the last time I visited the Tufnell Park Dome was probably 1997, when I was fresh out of University, and had moved to London seeking new adventures. Suffice to say I did not find them in Tufnell Park. It was an even stranger choice when you consider that they probably could have sold this out at least twice over – judging from the number of people who were asking me about spare tickets alone. Such oversubscription was inevitable given that this was the first ever UK appearance by two heavyweights of the great Sublime Frequencies roster: Group Doueh from Western Sahara, and Omar Souleyman from Syria.

Stories of Sublime Frequencies’ Hisham Mayet trekking through the Saharan desert to track down the enigmatic Bamaar Salmou (aka Doueh) are legend. You can see why he did: Doueh’s amplified desert blues sound, whilst reminiscent of some more famous Toureg bands, has a power and hypnotic intensity of its own. This wasn’t immediately apparent when he began on ngoni, but when he switched to electric guitar the atmosphere began to crackle – the sound was a bit rough, but that only seemed to add a gritty authenticity and a raw excitement. Underneath some energetic call and response between vocalists Halima (Doueh’s wife) and Bashima, he settled on one loud bluesy phrase, and worked on it for a good ten minutes – he could have stayed in that same groove all night and the crowd would have cared not one dirham. However, he had loads more of these huge ragged riffs to dispense over the course of the evening, and dispense them he did, his stern face only cracking at the end when he began to play them with his instrument behind his head, Hendrix style, to huge cheers from the crowd.

The audience were pretty fired up then for the Uk debut of Syrian folk-pop cassette legend Omar Souleyman, appearing on stage with keyboardist, electric saz and an, erm, “poet”. The performance began with unexpected intensity, Souleyman declaiming righteously over a deep throbbing pulse. This quickly gave way, with the impressive keyboard player Rizan Sa’id knocking out pounding (and agreeably tinny) 4/4 rhythms and ecstatic, furiously-paced solos, keeping the performance in this Syrian rave mood for the remainder. Over this, Souleyman would prowl the stage shouting “aaaaaaAAAAAY!”, wagging his finger disapprovingly and delivering fierce couplets. All the while the aforementioned “poet” whispered in his ear, so often in fact that I began to wonder if he was in fact feeding him updates on the progress of Souleyman’s team in the Syrian FA cup final. The crowd were a batshit folk-pop moshpit by this point, and a pair of portly Syrian chaps couldn’t resist the rhythms, clambering on stage to gyrate, one with markedly more enthusiasm than the other. “aaaaaaAAAAAY!” called Souleyman. “aaaaaaAAAAAY!” responded a crowd gleefully enjoying a music which was probably so alien to their normal choice of listening material, but who had been fully converted on the road to Damascus.