Torb

One day Songlines will have to invent a prize for ‘most niche’ music genre and performer. Catalan medieval folk will surely be a contender and Els Berros de la Cort, its foremost exponent, has to be in the running. To this specialist form the group bring vigour, virtuosity and a kind of emotional violence. While their three previous albums have concentrated on reworking old compositions, Torb contains all-original tracks. Informed by extensive research into medieval Catalan and Occitan songbooks, it's a development rather than a digression, but it suggests confidence that the core canon can be built on – and that there's an audience for it.

The 11 songs have a classical shape, with distinct, short movements, changes of pace and thematic evolution. Fans of Scots and Irish traditions will hear similarities in the energetic rhythms and the drone of the hurdy-gurdy and bagpipe. If there is a truly distinctive trait, it's insistence: the instrumentals are bold but brash, riotous yet repetitive. Torb means ‘Blizzard’ – a destructive, blinding, elemental force of nature. When I listen to this album, I see musicians with their heads down, lost in spiralling melodies, committed but not necessarily communing with me. This might be a Catalan posture: it's a region where the ancestral overlaps with an anguished anomie, where the cosmopolitan melds with the parochial. Niche music is mainly about satisfying the faithful, not proselytising. Els Berros' update of their beloved ancient music is rootsy as hell, sure, but it's not flowering wide or high.