Revolutionary takes on traditional folk, spliced with music concrète and field recordings along the Thames. This highly acclaimed album (Pitchfork, Quietus, Wire, etc.) is like no other. "All of it has the capacity to make your hair stand on end" - Pitchfork (7.7) // "A thing of rare emotional power." - The Quietus (31st best album of 2022) // "One of the most forward-thinking and original collections of traditional material you’re likely to hear this year, or any year." – FolkRadio // "Marks the arrival of a new generation of politically conscious traditional folk singers" – TradFolk // ‘The Water is the Shovel of the Shore’ is the revelatory new release by the nine-piece contemporary folk group Shovel Dance Collective, an expansive ensemble of multi-disciplinary artists and musicians currently based in London. Comprising members of caroline, Gentle Stranger, as well as accomplished visual artists and solo instrumentalists, Shovel Dance Collective reconceive traditional folk music as an experimental mode of longform composition, encompassing drone, early music, free improvisation, and metal. In the performances and recordings of the collective, the arrangements and lyricism of the folk canon are reinvented, as historically disenfranchised perspectives are placed at the forefront. Predicated on recounts of queer experience, black consciousness, pioneering feminist ideals, and the labour of the working class, the output of Shovel Dance Collective represents an inclusive repository of subversive oral folklore.
