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Being voted Best group 2007 and Best Live Act, 2005 in the Radio 2 Folk Awards wasn't a huge surprise as this 11 piece have re-defined modern trad folk music... and they are like a bag full of weasels on stage, damn talented weasels mind..

photo ©David Angel

Fronted by the busy duo of John Spiers and Jon Boden they take traditional English dance music and song, put it through some strange alchemical process involving soaring percussion and brass and end up with a product that blows away the cobwebs of any preconceived ideas. Jon Boden gets emotion, glee and passion into every line of a song... words like 'dynamic', 'spectacle', 'frenetic', 'frenzy', seem to fill any review of them.

The thing to remember here is that they have achieved all this after just a year and the release of only one EP. That's either a huge affirmation of their abilities or an indicment of the current state of trad folk, I'm sure it's the former but they are definitely the crew to shake all the dust of the genre. Their eagerly awaited first full album 'Burlesque' see's their promise carried through.

Often referred to as the 'Spiers & Boden Big Band' as the 2004 BBC Best Folk Duo award winners have undoubtably a larger than life presence on stage and recording, yet without the unbridled invention of the percussion and the dose of brass funk it wouldn't be so grand. That's not to say the other four members just stand idly by (see earlier bag of weasels comment)