This Paris-based octet fronted by two violin-wielding brothers, Eric and Olivier Slabiak, offers rhythmic and emotional tunes that take the listener into a dizzying vortex of Central European sounds and images. Considered and complex yet wild and occasionally raucous, Les Yeux Noirs (The Black Eyes) certainly give notions of musical purity a good bruising. Theirs is a sound that ignores the divisions of political maps, sneaks past border patrols and extends the hand of fraternity right across Central and Eastern Europe. Equal parts gypsy and klezmer (with plenty of jazzy flourishes to boot), the band draws on music from right across the region, from Hungary down to Armenia.