This album is a companion volume to ‘Space & Art Rock from Hungary – Periferic 2002’ and the full title is ‘Folk-World-Ethno from Hungary – Periferic 2002’. As may be gathered, this is a sampler album from the Hungarian label Stereo Periferic covering their folk/world artists. To date I haven’t heard any of these CDS so I interested in what they might contain. I have to say that there are quite a few songs that come across exactly how I would expect them to, strong on violins and acoustic guitar but on going through the album I came across two real gems.
The first of these is Ultamarin with “Esti Dal” (taken from ‘Ultamarin’). It starts slow but some becomes a contemporary piano based number with extremely powerful female vocals. I have no idea what she is singing about but I love hear voice and the drumming underneath almost gives this a dance-style beat. It wouldn’t take much work to turn this into a hit! But the standout highlight is found near the end of the album, with Sebestyén Márta performing the best version of “Greensleeves” (taken from ‘Inspirations’) that I have ever heard. A gentle flute intro gives way to this voice, and what a voice. With just a hint of reverb, this unaccompanied version of the song really has to be heard to be believed. If you want to discover a different side to this Hungarian label then this is the way to do it.

Kev Rowland