Trio Gitan
Album: Eastern Horizons
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.triogitan.com

I have to admit Trio Gitan, Paul Carroll, Jack Burge and Andrew Lawrenson, are a band that have managed to sneak up on me. I didn't relate to their previous album, "Moldovian Cafe", which has found its way into one of the darker recesses of the collection, so when "Eastern Horizons" arrived I have to admit it didn't exactly rush to the top of the review pile, something, as it happens , that turns out to have been a big mistake. A mistake rectified not by me initially, but rather by hearing Trio Gitan's version of "Caprice No 24" on a friends radio show.

"Caprice No 24" is probably best known as the theme tune to Melvyn Bragg's "The South Bank Show", but Trio Gitan's version had me reaching for "Eastern Horizons" and I have to say I found myself being impressed.

There is a real dynamic to the interplay between the three main instruments, violin, guitar and accordion, with an occasional addition of vocal, it's an interplay that allows the album to visit many styles and feels, which though predominantly drawing on classical and klezmer seem also to have more swing and Celtic touches than the previous cut.

I think one thing that characterises the album is that it feels very upbeat. A busker of my acquaintance once mentioned to me that the key to that art, is to capture the attention and hold it for long enough to ensure that when people reach into their pocket it's for the bigger coins and then to do the same again with something that sounds different enough to catch a group of people walking past, but also to give something of interest to those you've already got, because nothing attracts people like people and in a very flattering way that's exactly what "Eastern Horizons" does.

Neil King