Mirage

Founded in Valencia in 2012 as an itinerant acoustic folk trio but now based in Bristol with their current line-up including siblings Tamsin (accordion, flute, whistles) and Rowan Elliott (violin) alongside JP Wolfgang (guitar), Elio Arauz de Marcos (drums, percussion and vocals) and Henry Edmonds (bass), these festival favourites dazzlingly explore ideas of Arabic music, flamenco and Ethio-jazz across a 14-track album, written over the past four years.

It’s a collection that’s confident and mature enough to show off flashes of humour alongside the dazzling musicianship – a cover of Tunisian oud player Dhafer Youssef’s ‘Odd Elegy’ is followed by Tamsin’s musical tribute jocularly dubbed ‘Allegedly Odd’ while JP’s solo flamenco palo comes from the miners of Eastern Andalucia, but is quite deliberately linked to the miners of his Welsh hometown by giving it the Welsh title ‘Ysbryd y Mwynwyr’. By no means the least impressive achievement here is the way so many pan-global musical influences come together quite so coherently. As ‘Suénala’, effectively the album’s only vocal track, urges: ‘Let the music sound!’