Recycle

Founded in 2006, Hungary's Cimbaliband are a surefire festival hit. Centred on the larger-than-life cimbalom player Balázs Unger, they are hugely accomplished musicians, informed by tradition but certainly having fun with it. Unger has toured with American duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw, who guested on the excellent second Cimbaliband album Feketetó. On Recycle, their seventh studio album, named after the way they ‘recycle’ traditional music, the songs are all Balázs Unger originals. Their new lead vocalist is Dóra Danics, a Hungarian X Factor winner who has wisely fled to folk music. The songs range from a celebration of Budapest coffee (‘Fő a Kávé’) to the rural, Transylvanian-sounding ‘Nyírfaág’ and ‘Balázs Telke’.

The cimbalom is, of course, at the centre of the arrangements, sometimes furiously fast and percussive and sometimes sweetly lyrical, as on ‘Bírlak’ where it sings a beautiful slow dance tune from Bonchida. There's super-fast virtuoso fiddling from Máté Solymosi – Cimbaliband seem to have a new fiddler on each album. I suspect they just get worn out.