Work, pleasure and community: it’s all there in the name of this British nine piece folk group. Describing folk music as ‘the organic cultural product of the labouring classes’, Shovel Dance Collective treat folk as a landscape to explore, not a tradition to obey.
Following the success of groups like the Irish Lankum, Shovel Dance Collective reinvent doom-laden ballads, workers’ songs and music from former colonial territories. In a dramatic blend of drones, found sounds and field recordings, this leaderless group stretches the boundaries of Britain’s unique folk song tradition by relating it to queer histories, feminist narratives and rebellious working class movements since the industrial revolution. Their arrangements emphasise the inviting nature of folk, gesturing towards a cross-temporal synthesis of free improvisation, tape manipulation and field recordings both traditional and experimental at once. Along with their aesthetic sensibilities and sonic innovations, the group’s patchwork recontextualisations are sewn with a sense of labour and class, just as traditional music carries the voices of the oppressed.
Shovel Dance Collective is presented at Ultima and hcmf// in 2024 in the context of Sounds Now.
More Sounds Now at Ultima 2024 and hcmf// 2024: check out Laura Bowler’s Advert, or Noise Uprising