The annual Hidden Notes festival of contemporary and avant garde music sits well with the Cotswold market town of Stroud’s well-established reputation for experimental arts. It was somehow inevitable that a Hidden Notes record label would also emerge and Fran & Flora’s 2019 debut collection Unfurl was an early release.

That album garnered instant critical acclaim for its combination of impressive musicianship and creative originality, setting a standard that this Precious Collection happily matches. The core of their music lies in Klezmer and other Eastern European folk musics and it’s clear how deeply they are embedded in those traditions in straightforward tracks like the mournful 'Dobriden', segued with 'Hamanul'’s sprightly dance or the understated cello rendition of 'Sholem Aleichem'. The simple and beautiful Yiddish song 'Feygele' ('Little Bird') benefits from an elaborate arrangement, however, and Ursula Russell’s drumming.

The true distinction of their music comes when they take imaginative flight, deploying this musical language in more abstract ways. Thus 'Romanian Fantasies II' creates a sombre orchestra from looped and processed sounds, the swooping flourishes of Flora Curzon’s violin undercut by Francesca Ter-Berg’s growling cello while the sinister 'Flowers For Innocence' scrapes and drones into a plangent melody that is more glimpsed than stated. By contrast, the energetic 'Kick Up In 9' pretty much does what it says on the tin, chunky cello weaving in and out of the soaring fiddle, tight unison and call and response enlivening the arrangement. These are two extremely skilled musicians who, while deeply respectful of music’s underlying traditions, are empowered to take their own directions within and beyond them, creating a fascinating hybrid that is very much their own.