Folk without frontiers

The Slovenian stylists who are conquering the world come to Falkirk.

UP AND COMING? TERRAFOLK will be literally sprouting from the ground next weekend. At this year's Big in Falkirk festival, the band will emerge from inside giant three-and-half-metre high pods, like alien spring flowers, in front of a phantasmagoric tree. While they play, a pyrotechnic display of fireworks exploding around them will change the tree's colour like the seasons. Risky or what? Are they practising on top of ladders?

"Not yet, but we will," their leader, Danijel Cerne (aka Mystica) tells me. "It's a first for us because our music is all about face-to-face contact and interacting on stage. So we've been rehearsing without looking at each other, which has been a little strange!" Mystica manages to say "strange", by the way, as if he actually means "hysterically funny". "We will have 'in air' monitoring so we will hear each other's playing in our ears on small headphones," he adds. "If there is any fear, it is that we may get carried away and fall out of the tree!"

Achieving the unexpected is a Terrafolk hallmark. To the roots and world music community's amazement (and some people's chagrin) they won the 2003 Audience Awards at the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music. At the time nobody – outside of a cult audience in Edinburgh, New Zealand and Slovenia – knew anything at all about them. But the previous year, at the Edinburgh Fringe, they had won a Spirit of the Fringe Award and the following year they nabbed a Tap Water Award. Some jealous spirits in the metropolis to the south talked of a small group of fans voting them into Radio 3 fame – which might just constitute what an audience award means.

So who are they? Terrafolk are a band of intrepid virtuoso musicians with classical training, notably violinist Bojan Cvetreznik and accordionist Marko Hatlak. Mystica ("A friend's grandmother gave me that name and it stuck"), who grew up playing the electric guitar in a folk music family, is a sociology graduate with a passion for esoteric religions. Was it busking in New Zealand that led to them cultivating theatrical ways with esoteric music? "We were there for a project and stayed on, paying our way playing the streets," he says. "It taught us to be experimental, offer energy, gear ourselves to catching people's attention by making them laugh and enjoy themselves. It's about playing around with music without disrespecting music's deep spirit."

Terrafolk shape-shift their music by dressing it in unexpected arrangements. Influences include Celtic, Balkan, klezmer, gypsy, Mexican and Gypsy music – anything that takes their fancy. They have two homes: Slovenia, and Edinburgh at festival time, where their iconoclastic ways have made them a huge hit at the Spiegeltent. "Someone told us Edinburgh was impossible to crack as there are so many talented artists on the streets, as well as inside buildings," says Mystica.

"That was enough to bring us here. We met crazy musicians and found people who liked us. We found you can let go of all musical inhibitions and imprisoning morality: if you want to play Bach in a funny way you can, as long as your musicianship is good."

For Full Circle, the Big in Falkirk show, Terrafolk will play a seasonal soundtrack, kicking off and returning to Bach's Goldberg Variations via waltzes, jazz, drum and bass. They will include their hallmark death metal version of You Are My Sunshine, as well as a bewitching piano lullaby. What were their inspirations? "We have one song called Moon Is The Place for the Spring Storm, with the voice of John F Kennedy speaking about the first man landing on the moon," says Cerne. "We go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard, and that sums us up really. We are not going to the moon, but trying to go where none has trod musically is certainly a prime motivation."

The Falkirk line-up will see Mystica playing without regular partner in crime Bojan Cvetreznik: have the two fallen out? "Not at all. We have these classical projects: one with the Jenaer Philharmonic Orchestra in Jena, near Berlin; another with a new Orchestra of Slovenia made of classical musicians who are not employed in orchestras, for an International Conference gig connected with the Presidency of Slovenia. Then more orchestra shows in France and maybe we will bring an orchestra to Edinburgh.

"Slovenia is full of amazing migrant musicians from Russia, Croatia, Ukraine, Serbia, Austria whose playing blows your mind. So we decided to each take responsibility for a project. I had done Axis, an earlier album dedicated to a tree, with a previous group, Terra Mystica, so Full Circle was right for me!"

Mystica tells me that while the anarchy in him makes him "love that crazy world out there", he is never happier than when he is sitting by a wood stove in his home in a small town near the Italian border. Is there anything obviously Slovenian about their music? "It's an attitude," he says. "We do not make borders with music: all musics are valid and we love them all."

• Terrafolk will perform Full Circle at the Big in Falkirk festival in Callendar Park on 4 May. For more information about the band, visit www.terrafolk.org

What other people are saying...

"The eccentric, highly talented Slovenian four-piece produced five minutes of pure musical theatre, with, in the middle, a grand entrance by violinist Anja Bukovec. If Terrafolk stole the show, and Bojan our minds, Anja stole our hearts. Perfect."

– Shetland Times review from Shetland Folk Festival

"It would be a brave person who thought that he had the measure of a Terrafolk show. There are the Gipsy traditions, the conservatory-standard musicianship, liberal injections of lunacy, audience participation, fiery exchanges between violin and accordion and just when you're thinking, well, that's quite a lot to be going on with, they'll produce some expert Bach or a heavy-metal solo out of an acoustic guitar."

– The Herald