Arabesque Tlata 3

It's not often that the third album in a series is better than the first two, but four years after launching their concept, the compilers of Arabesque have really found their feet.This selection has been made by a trio comprising, Mourad Mafouz, owner of Momos Restaurant in Londons West End, together with Stephane Malca and Hakim, respectively the live music programmer and DJ in the Kemia Bar in the basement underneath it.

Beautifully sequenced, the album rolls along with unabashed confidence, launched by the evergreen "NSel Fik", the 1984 duet by Sahraoui and Fadela that was the first Rai record heard by a certain generation of British listeners, its bass line the epitome of addictive funkiness.Like so many great songs, "NSel Fik" was by far the strongest track on the album it was drawn from, and this collection does a fine job in cherry-picking several other albums that were either erratic in quality or simply repetitive.

Tracks 2, 3 & 4 are accessible, melodic songs by Cheb Bilal, Rachid Taha and Biyouna, whose producers manage to make the songs easy to listen to without surrendering to commercial formulas. Cheikha Rimitti is sometimes called the godmother of Rai, as so much of her repertoire has been reworked by younger Algerian stars.Now in her seventies, Rimitti is still a compelling live performer whose 1999 album is consistently good, but it's tough to listen to from start to finish. The track chosen here is a welcome taster, as is the one that follows it, another rootsy song by an Algerian women of a similar age, Hasna El Bacharia, a singer and Guimbri player whose powerful debut album is strictly for connoisseurs.

After bravely putting those two uncompromising artists back-to-back, the compilers take us back into a sequence of easy-on-the-ear songs by Natacha Atlas, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Cheb Khaled, Nitin Sawhney and Rasha, the Sudanese singer based in Spain, whose "Azara Alhai" is becoming a compilation classic.

And finally the album winds down into three dance-oriented tracks of the type that characterised Arabesque Volume One. "Ford Transit" by dZihan & Kamien is the closest the album comes to wallpaper, but all is forgiven when its lull sets us up for the storm of "Aisha" by Aishas Jarring effects, a pioneering classic from 1991.

All in all, the finest compilation of North African music since HamidZagzoule's Tea in Marrekesh (Earthworks).