Tim Hughes braces himself for the Gypsy punk revolution – courtesy of the bombastic Gogol Bordello.

THE beautiful Oxfordshire Cotswolds encapsulate the best of Olde England… with cream teas, sleepy villages of honey-coloured cottages, oh and, this weekend at least, a rampaging bunch of gypsy punks.

Fear not, tfor the safety of the hallowed acres of west Oxfordshire. This band of rebels are only interested in turning the conventions of modern rock on their head.

They are called Gogol Bordello, they hail from the former Soviet Union, Latin America and the United States, and, on Saturday, they bring their chaotic cocktail of traditional Romany rhythms, Eastern European melodies, irreverent punk-rock and roof-raising rabble-rousing to the usually sedate grounds of Cornbury Park, as guests of this weekend’s Wilderness Festival.

Led by Ukrainian Roma refugee Eugene Hutz, Gogol Bordello are on a self-declared mission to change the world.

“Gogol Bordello’s task is to provoke the audience towards new sources of authentic energy,” he says, stating the band’s manifesto with the conviction of a tub-thumping revolutionary.

“With acts of music, theatre chaos and sorcery, we confront the jaded and irony-diseased,” he goes on. “Our treatment of traditional material is not irony-driven; it is real. Our theatre is spontaneous and chaotic and because of that is alarming and response-provoking.”

More than that, though, it is fun – lively and adrenaline-fuelled it is groundbreaking, yet drawing on ancient traditions.

Eugene agrees. “From where we stand it is clear that the world’s cultures contain material for endless art possibilities and mind-stretching,” he says.

“We choose to work with gypsy cabaret and punk traditions. It’s what we know and feel.”

Like so many things, the band would not be here at all were it not for something unpleasant – in this case, the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Eugene’s native Ukraine.

Escaping the disaster, his family trekked through Eastern Europe, rediscovering the gypsy culture of their forebears, before ending up in the US. Living in Vermont, the young Eugene headed to New York, diving headlong into the local punk scene, hooking up with other émigrés and forging his own transglobal sound.

“Our Gypsy-punk movement is a culture of its own,” he says. “It would be a sign of idiocy for someone to describe it as a fad or trend.

“People that don't know us think we fell from the sky a few years ago. But we see ourselves as part of a long gypsy tradition.”

The band is suitably mongrel, consisting of Sergey Rjabtzev, a violin-wielding theatre director from Moscow; Yuri Lemeshev, an accordion player from the Russian Far East; guitarist Oren Kaplin from Israel; drummer, Californian-born Trinidadian-Italian-Swede Oliver Francis Charles, Ethiopian bassist Thomas ‘Tommy T’ Gobena; Ecuadorian percussionist and MC, Pedro Erazo; and Chinese cymbal-bashing washboard-scraping backing singer Elizabeth Chi-Wei Sun.

Fans of the band of old may be surprised to hear another element to their cross-cultural sound. Now living in Brazil, Eugene has absorbed the charm, swagger and rhythm of his adopted South American home — as evidenced by their fifth Latin-flavoured album Trans-Continental Hustle.

The latest album was produced by recording legend Rick Rubin. “Rick inspired us to focus on the very soul entity of our songs,” says Eugene.

“He inspires confidence to always do your best and mature work.”

And it is going down very well with UK fans, with 10,000 packing out shows, a triumphant Reading Festival appearance, and none other than Rage Against the Machine selecting them to play at their huge Finsbury Park gig.

For Eugene though, it’s all a part of shaking up the musical establishment.

“Our philosophy is constant evolution,” he says.

“We want to make the comment ‘everything has been done before’ sound like an intellectual error.

“We are coming as a trans-global art syndicate that has never been witnessed before... so party!”

* Wilderness, on the Cornbury estate,takes place from August 12-14. Go to wildernessfestival.com Bands include Mercury Rev, Gogol Bordello, Antony and the Johnsons, and Guillemots, plus other attractions. Tickets start at £60.