The South London contemporary folk nine-piece share sounds and visualisations from their upcoming mixtape of live recordings
“We had a long conversation about the openended and continually transforming elements of folk music,” says banjo and shruti box player Jacken Elswyth, describing the preparations for Shovel Dance Collective's upcoming self-released mixtape Offcuts And Oddities Vol 2 in The Wire 482. In Lucy Thraves' interview with the nine-strong folk ensemble, the members explain their drive to bridge the contemporary and traditional through their work, as demonstrated in their latest release, which compiles fragments of song and sound in the form of live recordings, voice notes and tape experiments. Here the group share two tracks from Offcuts And Oddities Vol 2 with accompanying hand-drawn visualisations.
“These tracks are both tape collages first captured in February last year”, the collective explain over email. “The first is from moments on our tour and the second from a performance Ollie [Hamilton] and Dan [S Evans] did near Telegraph Hill [in South East London] last year. Both were documented (by Alex [Mckenzie] and Dan respectively) to archive and transform moments in sound with no real intention of what they could end up becoming, or even sounding like. That's the joy in them, that they are so casual. The music you can hear we very often play or sing together, or they have/will be included on recordings of ours in a different form. These recordings by definition make no claim to being definitive, but they capture something we never could in a studio. This special something simultaneously contains our love for processes, the joy in tape and it's quirks, and also how we view folk music - always making itself.”
Read Lucy Thraves's interview with Shovel Dance Collective in full in The Wire 482. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital library of back issues. Offcuts And Oddities Vol 2 is self-released.
