Shovel Dance Collective at Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall

Shovel Dance Collective are a folk group of nine musicians united by a passion for the beauty, force, and political charge of the traditional musics of Britain, Ireland and beyond. Their music appears as a patchwork as pieces are stitched together, rearranged and recontextualised. The yarn is threaded with their sense of aesthetic innovation, and with a deep sense of the ways in which traditional music holds the voices of the oppressed.

They have performed sold out shows across the UK, with headline concerts at venues such as Cafe OTO, Kings Place and Cecil Sharp House. The collective have appeared at many major festivals including Glastonbury, Roskilde, SXSW, Rewire and Green Man. Their albums ‘The Shovel Dance’ and ‘The Water is the Shovel of the Shore’ have been championed by The Wire, MOJO, Uncut, KLOF, Songlines et al. and both were named albums of the year by The Quietus.