folk band – Celtarabia

It was a pleasure to play at the Magical Sounds Tent at Bearded Theory Festival I think the pictures tell the story of the gig….

Many thanks to Richard Duffy-Howard for the wonderful photographs.

Celtarabia have played at Dogs in Space in both their ‘sound system’ and ‘unplugged’ formats a number of times over the years and have gone down a storm every time!
Unplugged, they breathe fresh air into traditional and ancient folk tunes, combining skilled musicianship on instruments rarely heard with strong vocals and a brilliant sense of humour, to produce a set that has the audience dancing right from the word go.
In their sound system format, they go one step further, taking a traditional folk/dance sound as a starting point and skilfully augmenting that with solid trance and dub beats and basslines, bleeps and sequencing to produce a truly unique ‘sound’ that gets even the most dyed in the wool technoheads up and dancing to what is essentially, dance music from a forgotten time!
‘Electro folk’, ‘medieval techno’, call them what you like but these skilled exponents of ancient instruments and music are genuinely a pleasure to work with and to behold.

Michael Dog
Programmer of Dogs in Space,

Solfest, Cumbria

Celtarabia Unplugged – The magical combination of hurdy gurdy and hammered dulcimer brought together by two inspired musicians Quentin & Amanda creates a spell-binding aural feast that provides the missing link between medieval and contemporary cutting edge dance music. Great audience rapport coupled with fine musicianship and music that has wide genre-crossing appeal gives this duo an appeal that will ensure they go from strength to strength as they build on the firm foundations they established many years back with the excellent full band Celtarabia.

Jim McLaughlin
Artistic Director,
Musicport

Celtarabia described by Mark Pollard organiser of The Hull Folk Festival

"After a full day of music and a fair bit of drinking, the crowd was starting to get itchy feet. The first signs were a bit of shuffling and swaying, which became more animated whenever an act performed an upbeat number, and ended up with people jigging and reeling at the front of the stage. By the time the final act was ready to play they really needed something more, though; something that would allow them to absolutely lose themselves in sound and rhythm. Thankfully, that final act were Celtarabia; right from the off the crowd became a seething mass of whirling dervishes, immersed in 45 minutes of hypnotic world and roots fusion. There really was no finer way to end the day!"