Adams / Dodo Street Band / Byrne Natural Selection CD

Returning from 300 years of extinction, Dodo Street have recorded a trailblazing, joyously wild musical odyssey, encompassing melodies from the shores of the Hebrides to the mountains of Eastern-Europe. Their history-defying existence brings extreme velocity and inhuman precision from Adam Summerhayes ("astonishing, all-out virtuosity" New York Times) and Piers Adams ("superhuman" Washington Post) - and the rest of the band is equally virtuosic. Master accordionist Murray Grainger and one of Europe's most renowned bass players, Malcolm Creese, provide the powerful core of the band as well as dynamic solos. The livewire Cormac Byrne, king of Irish percussion and BBC Folk Award-winning bodhran player, can easily steal the show. But it is the music that is really remarkable. There is nothing predictable about their tunes. On Natural Selection, a famous Irish melody might take a wild Klezmer twist, an ancient Scottish wedding song is recast in a mesmeric soundscape that evokes the lonely island from which it came, gypsy tunes and Eastern European rhythms spiral faster and faster, impossible not to dance to. Instrumental limits are pushed to the extreme, but the band never loses control or tightness and the music is, above all, driven by potent melodies, whether centuries old or newly penned.