Shovel Dance Collective sign to tak:til for the album Everything In Readiness

Shovel Dance Collective have signed to tak:til, a sub-label of Glitterbeat, and their third album, Everything In Readiness, comes out through it on 23 October 2026. The Quietus reported the announcement on 19 August 2026.

The record runs to 11 tracks and follows The Shovel Dance, which came out in 2024. It builds on what the group have already done and pushes further into the production around field recordings and tape manipulation.

Asked to describe it, they answered as a collective and reached for cloth. "The metaphor of weaving, or a patchwork quilt, increasingly feels like the best way to describe what we have done," they said, adding that their shared musical language has sharpened alongside the way they research specific and underperformed traditional music.

The lead track is Tally Ho, Hark Away!, released with a video. "Our Tally Ho! is not a hunter's victory cry but a lament," the group said, explaining that it came from the piper's fox hunt tradition they fell for while touring. Where the tradition celebrates the huntsman, their version mourns the fox and imagines it freed from brutality into innocence, with horns and cymbals marking the ascension.

Members of the group have work in circulation under their own names. Jacken Elswyth, a banjo player and instrument maker, made At Fargrounds, which The Quietus ran as an album of the week; Nick Granata, who sings and plays organ in the collective, has a solo debut out. The group also recorded a live set released to Quietus subscribers.

Everything In Readiness goes on the release calendar with the autumn's other traditional-leaning country and folk records, near Bela Fleck's Ryman live album with Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle and the acts on Hardly Strictly Bluegrass's fourth round of 2026 performers.

A UK tour follows in early 2027, booked to mark the release, with the full list of dates already out.