TÉADA Inné Amárach Gael Linn****

If music can be said to have an accent, then Téada's tongue is unashamedly coloured by the shadows of Ben Bulben. Sligo's subtle flute and fiddle inflections are at the heart of the band's sound, and on their third CD they've reached their majority, with a lateral-thinking repertoire that fearlessly collides and sensually shimmies, as the tunes dictate - in all the right places.

Téada thrives on the wedding of unlikely bedfellows of tunes, so that tempo, pace and sheer verve are as unpredictable as a warm front in hurricane season. Their marriage of a march, barndance and reel on the set bookended by Jamesy Gannon's and Over the Moor to Peggy reflects an appetite for shaking it up, yet their disciplined playing and complex arrangements whisper of a comfort with both creative flair and academic precision. Oisín MacDiarmada's fiddle and Damien Stenson's flute flutter and hush alongside one another, each instrument tiptoeing in and out of the tunes with an unhurried agility. There's a drawing-room grandeur to their haughty arrangement of the Delia Keane jig set, with Charlie Lennon's The Dawn Chorus lending a pensive close to a superb piece of ensemble playing, with bodhrán, box and guitar stitched into the tunes' fabric with the precision of a Parisian coutourier.

Accompanied by an informative (if at times a little po-faced) DVD, Inné Amárach is a snapshot of a band who revel in the unpredictable forces of the tradition, adding their own tincture of personality for deliciously good measure. www.ceolproductions.com

Siobhán Long