Anúna

ANUNA: "Anúna" (Danú)

THIS IS not one that somehow slipped through the net first time round. Anúna are a vocal and instrumental troupe with a membership numbering from seven to sixteen, depending on the job in hand, who specialise in the performance and development of Medieval Celtic music. Their director, the Dublin-born composer Michael McGlynn, has through years of research unearthed a vast and neglected repertoire, ranging from the chants of twelfth century Irish monks to ballads, lullabies and laments from later eras.

Their eponymous first album, released earlier this year, takes all of this as its raw material and deftly meshes it with contemporary arrangements, harmonies and élan. The result is an engrossing mosaic of the ancient and modern that can only be described by a word that has become the most hackneyed of reviewing tags, timeless.

There are probably all sorts of technical devices that I should employ to convey what Anúna do. The most effective way I can think of, however, is to say that if you close your eyes and listen, you can imagine yourself standing in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting through two tier Gothic windows. The beauty of it is that you don't have to endure any of the realities of being at a religious ceremony - the boredom, the absurdity, the sheer bloody waste of time - you just get the mood of what it should, maybe even could, be like.

Anúna's interpretations of these chants, hymns, and prayers manage to capture the only things that religion really has to offer, a sense of mystery and awe.

But Anúna manage to do even more than that. Conscious of the tremendous vocal and musical firepower at their disposal, they intersperse the spirituality with a few marvellously reupholstered items from the stable of more corporeal trad. They do great versions of 'Fionnghuala', the mouth music nonsense piece popularised by The Bothy Band, and of 'Sí Do Mhaimeo I', the infectiously rhythmic Connemara 'pop' song which has been covered by Altan among others. They also do a mighty 'Pol Ar Buile'! These people are my kind of virtuosi.

Anúna are magic realists. They achieve everything that Enya only aspires to and everything that Clannad have long ago abandoned even aiming for. A second album is due early next year. It has a lot to live up to.

• Liam Fay