Afro Celt Sound System are back. The band, founded by Simon Emmerson 20 years ago, release their first new studio album in 10 years next month, and this exuberant preview proved that their attitude and energy level hasn’t changed, even though there’s a new lineup. Iarla Ó Lionáird has left to sing with the Gloaming, but the band still includes the Guinean kora and balafon player and singer N’Faly Kouyate, as well as the Dhol Foundation’s leader, the enthusiastic Johnny Kalsi, who has also worked with Emerson in the Imagined Village.

Here, they were joined by an impressive cast that included the Scottish piper, guitarist, singer and rapper Griogair Labhruidh, the Scottish fiddler Hannah MacRae, and Rioghnach Connolly, a remarkable singer and flautist who was born in Armagh and can ease from Irish traditional influences to soul.

The Afro Celts’ original aim was to create a fusion of global styles and beats – and that hasn’t changed. They began with a drifting piece in which female voices, keyboards and percussion were interspersed with pipe solos, and then moved on to the excellent Magnificent Seven, in which pounding dhol drums were matched against flute and balafon, and Cascade, where African influences were intercut with Celtic themes. There were several exhilarating new songs, but the ever-emphatic keyboards and percussion began to overwhelm the musicianship and bravely original arrangements. The Afro Celts would be even more exciting if they were not so insistently full-tilt.