Executive Overview
The contemporary landscape of traditional British folk music is undergoing a radical, iridescent reformation. At the bleeding edge of this movement stands the nine-piece ensemble Shovel Dance Collective, an avant-folk powerhouse whose collaborative, improvisational, and deeply political ethos continues to challenge and expand the boundaries of the genre. Today, the collective has shared their latest single, ‘Jer the Rigger’, marking the third and final installment of an introductory suite from their eagerly awaited sophomore album, Everything in Readiness.
Slated for an official release on October 23, 2026, through Glitterbeat Records’ acclaimed tak:til imprint, the upcoming record follows their widely praised 2024 breakout, The Shovel Dance. That previous release established the nonet not merely as interpreters of antiquity, but as cultural architects who look to the past and the future simultaneously. With ‘Jer the Rigger’, accompanied by a striking collaborative visual piece by filmmakers Tim Plester and Rob Curry drawing from the legendary Doc Rowe archive, Shovel Dance Collective cements their status as essential chroniclers of modern communal heritage, queerness, labor history, and sonic radicalism.
Detailed Chronology: The Rollout of Everything in Readiness
The journey toward the release of Everything in Readiness has been conceptualized with the meticulous grandiosity of a theatrical suite. In an unconventional promotional strategy, the album’s first three interconnected pieces were engineered as an opening sequence and released to the public in reverse chronological order over the late summer and early autumn of 2026.
1. The Genesis of the Suite
- August 19, 2026: The campaign launched with “Tally Ho! Hark Away!”, a subversion of traditional hunting songs that immediately signaled the collective’s ideological stance. Rather than functioning as a celebration of blood sport and aristocratic dominance, the track was transformed into a profound lament. Inspired by the piper’s fox-hunt tradition encountered while touring, the collective reimagined the narrative to mourn the hunted fox rather than glorify the huntsman. Horns and cymbals swell to mark the animal’s symbolic ascension from brutality into absolute innocence.
- September 9, 2026: The second piece, “The Foxhunter’s Reel,” arrived as an adrenaline-fueled bridge. Developed continuously across the band’s rigorous touring schedule, the track showcases the ferocious, avant-garde fiddle work of Ollie, whose playing channels a wild, unbridled energy evocative of the legendary avant-folk pioneers of decades past.
- Today: The trilogy culminates with the release of “Jer the Rigger,” a piece that the collective notes was one of the earliest arrangements to find its footing during rehearsals. It quickly evolved into a live-set staple, characterized by rapid tempo shifts, intricate interplay among the nine members, and an uncompromising commitment to improvisational risk-taking.
2. Archival Visuals: The Plester and Curry Collaboration
To tie this opening triptych together, Shovel Dance Collective partnered with documentary filmmakers Tim Plester and Rob Curry. The resulting music video stitches together rare, evocative footage sourced directly from the renowned Doc Rowe archive and collection—a vast repository of British folklore, folk life, and seasonal customs.
The visual accompaniment acts as a sensory ethnography, juxtaposing the frantic, modern dissonance of the music with timeless scenes of human labor and communal ritual: traditional dry stone walling methods, ancient apple pressing techniques, and the kaleidoscopic pageantry of the Padstow May Day celebrations. This symbiotic marriage of sound and archive reinforces the collective’s central thesis: that folklore is not a static museum piece, but a living, breathing, and perpetually contested terrain of working-class history.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Shovel Dance Phenomenon
To understand the cultural weight of Everything in Readiness, one must examine the critical landscape that greeted their 2024 output. Reviewing The Shovel Dance for KLOF Mag, critic Thomas Blake encapsulated the group’s singular position in the modern musical ecosystem:
"A kind of avant-folk supergroup, but without any of the hubris that term implies, the Shovel Dance Collective are at the forefront of a new wave of traditional music, one which looks to the future and the past simultaneously. With their collaborational and often improvisational methods, they are changing the way folk music is created, putting an emphasis on its otherness, its queerness, its capacity for contemporary political comment and most importantly, its inclusivity. And what’s more, they are doing it with breathtaking, potent tunes."
Breaking Down the Ensemble Approach
Operating as a nine-piece ensemble is, logistically and musically, an exercise in controlled chaos. Where traditional folk bands often rely on rigid arrangements and strict adherence to historical songbooks, Shovel Dance Collective treats every composition as an evolving organism.
The band elaborated on this organic developmental process in a recent statement regarding their live shows and recording methodologies:
"The opening suite of three pieces (always imagined spiritually as one) was one of our first arrangements to find its feet. ‘Jer the Rigger’ developed quickly and remained a solid staple of our live set, and whilst ‘The Foxhunter’s Reel’ always came immediately afterwards, the way it developed and broke down was ultimately honed and changed constantly over our many live performances, with Ollie’s Flynt-esque fiddle always at the forefront. This became a theme for this record: arrangements constantly tinkered with on the road, new experiments with instrumentation, distortion and extended techniques, taking risks on stage (sometimes paying off, sometimes not!)."
This embrace of risk—utilizing distortion, extended instrumental techniques, drone, and free-improvisation within a traditional vernacular—places Shovel Dance Collective in rare company. They share ideological DNA with contemporary experimental folk acts like Lankum, Broadside Hacks, and The Dead Rat Orchestra, yet carve out a distinct niche through their explicitly leftist, queer-inclusive politics and collective governance structure.
Official Statements and Artistic Vision
The philosophical underpinnings of Everything in Readiness run far deeper than standard album conceptualization. By engaging directly with the dark undercurrents of pastoral life, labor exploitation, and liberation, the collective uses traditional song formats as vehicles for modern political resonance.
The transformation of “Tally Ho! Hark Away!” serves as a prime case study in their methodology. The band expanded on the track’s creation:
"Our Tally Ho! is not a hunter’s victory cry but a lament, inspired by the piper’s fox hunt tradition that we fell in love with while touring. Where tradition may celebrate the huntsman, our version mourns the fox, imagining them freed from brutality into innocence. Horns and cymbals sound to mark their ascension."
This revisionist historiography does not seek to rewrite the past maliciously, but rather to interrogate the power dynamics embedded within folk songs. Historically, hunting songs reinforced landed gentry privilege over the rural poor and the natural world. By reclaiming these sonic structures and weaponizing them for empathy toward the hunted, Shovel Dance Collective demonstrates how traditional music can actively participate in contemporary ecological and social justice discourse.
Future Outlook: Live Itinerary and Album Release
As anticipation reaches a fever pitch ahead of the October 23, 2026 release of Everything in Readiness via tak:til/Glitterbeat, Shovel Dance Collective are preparing to take their chaotic, transcendent live show across the United Kingdom.
The band’s tour schedule spans major metropolitan festivals, intimate independent record stores, and prestigious arts centers, promising audiences an unscripted, visceral experience where no two performances of tracks like ‘Jer the Rigger’ or ‘The Foxhunter’s Reel’ will ever be identical.
Shovel Dance Collective – 2026/2027 UK Tour Dates
- 08.10.2026 – Cardiff – Llais Festival
- 22.10.2026 – London – Rough Trade East (Live set + Album Signing)
- 25.11.2026 – Huddersfield – Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
- 04.02.2027 – London – Queen Elizabeth Hall
- 12.02.2027 – Nottingham – Metronome
- 13.02.2027 – Birmingham – Midlands Arts Centre (Supersonic Children’s Gig)
- 13.02.2027 – Birmingham – The Castle & Falcon
- 14.02.2027 – Manchester – New Century Locker
- 15.02.2027 – Edinburgh – The Caves
- 16.02.2027 – Newcastle – Gosforth Civic Theatre
- 17.02.2027 – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
- 18.02.2027 – Bristol – Mount Without
- 19.02.2027 – Totnes – Barrel House
- 14.03.2027 – Brighton – Komedia
With pre-orders already live for Everything in Readiness, listeners and critics alike are waiting to see how the remaining tracks on the album will expand upon the sonic blueprints laid down by the opening suite. If ‘Jer the Rigger’, ‘The Foxhunter’s Reel’, and “Tally Ho! Hark Away!” are any indication, Shovel Dance Collective are not just preserving folk music—they are ensuring its survival by tearing it down, rebuilding it, and letting it breathe in the modern world.
