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The Peatbog Faeries

A couple of weeks ago, four of us went to an arts venue in north London to see the Peatbog Faeries a folk band from Skye. Now, the idea of a folk band from the north west of Scotland might put you in mind of bagpipes, fiddles, kilts and lots of reels and celidh music. In which case, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but you wouldn’t be entirely right either. The Peatbog Faeries do indeed have a fiddle player and a piper, but any resemblance to a traditional Scottish folk band stops there.

The fiddle and pipes are backed up by bass, drums, keyboards and guitar to produce something that lies half way between techno-dance music and Celtic folk. It might be a strange concept, but boy do they rock. We first came across the band in the Sligachan Hotel on Skye. We’d come down from climbing Beinn Dearg Mheadhonach and were enjoying a glass of something cold and refreshing when we noticed the music playing on the stereo in the bar. I was so taken by it, that I asked for the CD cover, scanned the barcode with my phone and immediately bought a copy from Amazon to be waiting when we returned home. The album was Faerie Stories and has since become a firm favourite.

Back to the gig: the theatre was small, with seats at both sides. Appropriately for our advanced age, we managed to get seats and spent the first half of the concert tapping our feet demurely and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. However, we couldn’t keep that up and by a few minutes into the second half we were up on our feet, leaping around in a rather bad impression of the highland fling. Great stuff!

They don’t do a lot by way of chat between the songs and the light show was frankly weird (the band were lit from behind, so you we only saw them in silhouette), but it was a stunning gig. If you like folk music, or if you just like dancing, you must go and see the Peatbog Faeries.

Thanks to Dave and Lina for buying the tickets for us!