Falling into steppe

There's an Eastern European uprising going on right now - but this time, it's not political. We're talking gipsy punk music with plenty of stamping, clapping and vodka. Young Londoners are getting their Cossack kicks from Slavic nights, drawing on style and beats from the Balkans to Belarus.

Accordions, clarinets and fiddles are now commonplace at mainstream clubs such as Cargo and Favela Chic in Shoreditch, QuecumBar in Battersea, and Notting Hill Arts Club. This week you can even find gipsy bands all over London, thanks to the Balkan Fever festival.

The craze is partly thanks to anarchic gipsy shout merchant, Eugene H¸tz, frontman of the New York (via Eastern Europe) band Gogol Bordello. At summer festivals last year he had crowds leaping off the stage and splattering mud across marquees. I'm keen to find out more.

It's Sunday evening and I'm feeling a little tired and emotional after a busy weekend. Featuring bands, poets and general Slavic mayhem, will Radio Gagarin: Experiments In Sunday Socialism, at Notting Hill Arts Club lift my mood, or leave me out in the Siberian cold?

I've roped in my own Russian army for back-up. My boyfriend Gideon is sporting what is very much a dodgy cab driver look. My friend Mark has donned a Russian naval hat and I am wearing Russianstyle boots and a Moscow-style lacy top.

We are greeted at the door by a ravenhaired circus type. "Welcome! We are the Friends Of Gagarin," she exclaims, pointing to a motley troupe, one wearing an oversized dog mask, another in a bear mask, one dressed as Trotsky and another as Rasputin. Then a blonde in a cowboy hat bounds up and declares in a thick Russian accent: "I am Oliveska Newton-John."

On stage, London Sevdah, a band of Bosnian players complete with accordion and choir, performs wild folk music as the crowd watches and nods. Next, performance poets take to the stage, but their verse is muffled by the hubbub.

I order a round of specialist Ukranian vodka, hoping to drink away my scepticism. It's not long before DJ Max Reinhardt, the night's promoter, is on the decks and I'm dancing alongside the bear (who is meant to be Misha, mascot of Russia's 1980 Olympics) the dog (Laika, the first dog in space), Rasputin and Trotsky. I shimmy with Laika, who offers me his mask.

We sink more vodka, the crowd swells and the music gets more frenetic. Max announces the next act. Hailing from Hackney, The Alright Alreadies play a fusion of klezmer (Yiddish folk music) and reggae: they call it kleggae. Big-haired vocalist Nicky Falkof laments in a rich, deep voice and a distinctly British-tinged version of Russian.

But it is Mama Matrix and their charismatic frontman Daz Dolczech who get the crowd going, particularly the speeded-up version of Jewish wedding classic Hava Nagila, accompanied by a pulsing tuba and scratchy violectra. We form a ring and start to do the hora (the Jewish circle dance). It's like a bar mitzvah on speed.