and the Hun Hangar Ensemble at the Point 10/05/07

Eastern European music has never been more hip. Beirut, the prodigious one man band of New Yorker Zach Condon, achieved cult success last year with a marriage of Morissey-esque crooning and derivative Balkan folk music on the album 'Gulag Orkester' (Supposedly influenced by a time spent travelling round Europe, jamming with Gypsy bands, and wearing its itinerant heart on its sleeve with titles like 'Bratislava' and 'Rhineland (Heartland)'). Although having no knowledge of Eastern European folk music I can consider myself no arbiter of authenticity, there seemed something a little distasteful and disengenuous about the wholesale appropriation of another musical culture, topped off by referencing Communist labour camps with your album title and taking your stage-name from a troubled, war torn city. A little like the gap year student's collection of anonymously 'ethnic' beads and confused dalliance with Rastafarianism.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw (Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost) assisted the first Beirut releases, and are occasionally part of the Beirut live band, and as such are central to any contemporary 'Balkan chic' movement in American music. However, due to their touring line-up being currently bolstered by the Hun Hangar Ensemble - a collection of virtuoso Hungarian musicians the couple have met since moving to Budapest - they seem less open to doubts about their authenticity.

They opened tonight with a cinematic duet between cymabalon (a dulcimer-like instrument central to traditional Hungarian music) and Heather Trost's violin. One by one the rest of the band took to the stage through the crowd wearing masks redolent of an Eastern European sequel to the Wicker Man; wailing trumpets and swinging percussion instruments with a spine-tingling rattle, like a New Orleans funeral march transposed to a small Romanian agrarian community.

The largely instrumental music - punctuated occasionally by Jeremy Barnes's percussive yelps - was rich and emotive. The level of virtuosity was such that you could happily listen to any of the members playing unaccompanied. Indeed, Balázs Unger kept the audience in the Point entranced with a solo cymbalon piece that showcased his staggeringly dexterous technique and the breadth of emotion that could be conveyed with this instrument. Not bad for a man with the build of a sturdy farm hand and a ruddy face that seemed to sweat vodka with each immaculately executed arpeggio. Barnes seemed equally at home on accordion or percussion - he supplied the band's only percussion with an array of instruments played simultaneously with the accordion, and displayed impressive sticksmanship when he put the accordion to one side during the encore.

Unfortunately the crowd didn't seem to respond to the emotional heights of the music. Although appreciative, the British tradition of polite detachment was maintained - and seemed inappropriate given that the music was like the soundtrack to a hysterical, vodka fuelled wake prone to flipping at any moment from joyous celebratory dancing to wild, inconsolable grief. Things warmed up a little in the encore, as a large wooden rattle was passed enthusiastically round the audience.

Worried about how to review a gig of music I knew little about I asked Jeremy Barnes, as he was packing away his strange collection of percussive instruments, how 'authentic' the music was in terms of Eastern European folk music.

"Well, it's a real mixture. It's some old Jewish music, some traditional Hungarian songs, some Klezmer music and some jazz elements. The encore was one of the trumpet player's songs."

The first song, that I thought sounded like a New Orleans funeral march, was a traditional Jewish song.

"It's not really about authenticity - music hasn't got any borders. It's just twelve notes".

Maybe I was wrong to criticise Beirut for dressing his music up in an appropriated cultural history. But at the same time as being 'just twelve notes' music carries with it evocations of places and cultures. There is a certain romantic notion of Eastern Europe: an otherworldy, ageless place of sorrow, joy and alcohol fuelled gypsy parties (as in the late nineties 'beware the Judderman' Metz schnapps adverts). Their earnest and skilled evocation of this mythical place was another reason A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangar Ensemble's performance was so successful.

by Robin Wilkinson