Haiku Salut: The Instrumental Trio Redefining Folk, Electronics, and Live Performance
Emerging from the Derbyshire Dales in 2010, Haiku Salut have quietly but confidently established themselves as one of Britain's most inventive instrumental acts. The trio — multi-instrumentalists Gemma Barkerwood, Sophie Barkerwood, and Louise Croft — bring an astonishing range of instrumentation to their music, collectively playing accordion, piano, glockenspiel, trumpet, trombone, guitar, ukulele, drums, malletkat, synth, and melodica. The result is a rich, layered sound that defies easy categorisation, sitting somewhere between the organic warmth of folk tradition and the shimmering textures of modern electronica.
The band's journey began in earnest with their debut four-track EP, How We Got Along After the Yarn Bomb, released in 2011 on Team Strike Force records. This early offering hinted at the ambitious sonic world Haiku Salut were building, and it wasn't long before the wider music world took notice. Their debut album, Tricolore, arrived in 2013 on the How Does It Feel To Be Loved? label, and with it came a wave of critical adulation. Publications including The Guardian, Uncut, Mojo, and Drowned in Sound all awarded it four stars, while BBC 6 Music tastemakers Jarvis Cocker, Tom Ravenscroft, and Gideon Coe championed tracks from the record to their audiences.
The summer of 2013 proved to be a watershed moment for the trio. Winning the prestigious Green Man Rising contest, Haiku Salut earned the honour of being the first act to perform on the Mountain Stage at that year's Green Man Festival, a milestone that cemented their reputation on the UK's independent music circuit. Later that year, they took to the road as special guests of folk supergroup Lau, further widening their audience and demonstrating the broad appeal of their genre-crossing sound.
By 2015, Haiku Salut returned with their sophomore album, Etch and Etch Deep, which met with even greater critical enthusiasm. The Financial Times, NME, and The Guardian were among the many outlets to bestow four stars or more upon the record, recognising it as a bold and beautifully crafted step forward. The band continued to grow their discography with There Is No Elsewhere in 2018, The General in 2019, and The Hill, The Light, The Ghost in 2021, each release adding new depth to their already impressive body of work. Along the way, they also contributed to Public Service Broadcasting's celebrated 2017 album Every Valley, a collaboration that spoke to their stature within the wider alternative music community.
Perhaps as remarkable as their recordings is the innovative way Haiku Salut approach live performance. Debuting their now-legendary "lamp show" in April 2013 at Deda in Derby, the trio introduced an extraordinary visual dimension to their concerts, surrounding themselves with 20 vintage lamps programmed to flash, fade, and flicker in perfect synchronisation with their music. This immersive experience has since been staged at festivals, churches, theatres, libraries, and community centres across the UK, transforming each venue into something magical and entirely unique.
The band's spirit of experimentation has continued to push boundaries. In August 2018, they performed alongside The Robot Orchestra as part of The Hexagon Experiment during the Great Exhibition of the North, and later that year they unveiled a Virtual Reality experience built around the video for their song Occupy. From a rural corner of England, Haiku Salut have fashioned a world of sound and spectacle that is entirely their own — and they show no signs of stopping.
