Headstrong bunch

Very little has stood in Bellowhead's way since their 2004 inception. As baffling a concept as you're likely to find outside of the "things that really shouldn't work but actually do" wing of the Insane Musical Experiments Museum, the 11-member folk-world-jazz-fusion collective have steamrolled everything in their path in their quest for a distinctive sound and catchy tune.

They are a group who play traditional English folk music using their own arrangements, featuring a motley collection of string and brass instruments, percussion, drums and kitchen sinks in various stages of disrepair. It's hardly The Kooks, is it?

And yet Bellowhead are an astonishingly good band and have the gongs to prove it. Since the release of their 2006 debut album Burlesque, they've drawn praise from everyone from Frank Skinner to Anthony Kiedis.

They've torn apart every festival, concert hall and dance floor that they've graced and had Burlesque named as one of the "top 1,000 albums to listen to before you die" by The Guardian.

Perhaps most importantly, they've won the coveted Radio 2 Folk Award for best live act three times - vindication from top folkies that you're doing something right and a satisfying lump of gold to plonk on the mantelpiece to boot.

Drummer and percussionist Pete Flood explains the band's decision-making process when choosing new material.

"It's far more democratic than any other band I've been in. There are 11 different people in the band, so different people put in different flavours," he says.

"We're aiming for music where you can't really tell how far it's improvised and how far it's arranged. We end up as a homogenous whole that seems vaguely monolithic."

This year, Bellowhead have reached an even wider audience by taking part in the first ever folk day of the BBC Proms, playing in front of a crowd of bemused classical punters at the Royal Albert Hall and Proms in the Park. They're currently band in residence at the South Bank Centre in London. Phew.

With the release of second album Matachin and accompanying autumn tour, the band have expanded their sound further and have been exploring even quirkier songs and arrangements.

Matachin - meaning a sword-wielding dancer, as if you didn't know - is a worthy follow-up to Burlesque. The self-produced album is a rag-bag mixture of musical styles and, from gentle opening track Fakenham Fair on, it's apparent that Bellowhead's quality control department have been putting in the hours. The research and development department haven't been slacking either.

How many other groups would have the balls to include traditional songs about cholera or zombie armies rising from the dead? The most alarming track is Widow's Curse, which is the simple tale of a merchant who keeps women dressed as page boys for his amusement and gets one of them pregnant.

She then tops herself by drinking boiling hot wine, cursing said merchant, whose eyes promptly fall out while his tongue turns into a red-hot coal.

Flood chuckles as he relates a recent review that described the group as twee. "It made me think: 'Have you read those lyrics? Have you seen the subject matter?'"

Having been through such a whirlwind of tours, festivals and award ceremonies over the past few years, how have the band members coped? Flood smiles. "It's a good range of characters. On tour, you've always got someone else to hang out with if you're not getting on with another member of the band.

"We have a member who's very keen on throwing water about. He's a surfer who lives by the sea. When he's away from home and things get too tense, he likes to make his environment more, umm, moist."

Matachin is a superb record that captures an exuberant, exciting group stretching themselves out and enjoying the experience. While it may not appeal to those who like to have their music shrink-wrapped in cosy, genre-friendly boxes, to anyone with an ear for something a little unusual, it represents a diverse and challenging mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar.

Will Matachin be the band's major defining achievement? Flood reckons: "We'll have to see. We don't feel we've even scratched the surface of our potential yet."

Watch this space.

Bellowhead's nationwide tour starts in Manchester on October 23 and continues around Britain until January. Matachin is out now on Navigator Records.

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