Award-winning ‘broken folk’ duo Lunatraktors will be performing as their seasonal alter-egos Yulatraktors as they journey to the dark heart of Yuletide.

The duo, choreographer and percussionist Carli Jefferson and vocalist and researcher Clair Le Couteur, will be returning to the Dalby Schoolrooms for the concert on Wednesday, December 20, following their sell out performance there in August last year.

Carli told Island Life: ‘Our usual music reinterprets traditional folk songs with vocal harmony, percussion and deep drones - no guitars.

‘That’s probably one of the reasons people often describe our music as sounding ancient or primal. Our Yule concerts are the same, but we do it with medieval carols.’

They describe their music as ‘broken folk’, saying it’s for ‘queers and lunatics, misfits and nonconformists’.

Lunatraktors started out at the 50-seat Tom Thumb Theatre, in Margate, Kent in 2017, and they used the venue to test out their ‘mad ideas with a passionate crowd’.

‘That was the start of something that just keeps growing, and has now got a bit out of hand,’ Carli said.

Their first show as the Yulatraktors was performed there the following year.

‘Yule for us is more about the holly and the ivy than the manger,’ Carli said.

‘The main idea is we want to reconnect with a more ancient idea of Yuletide, something older and darker than the enforced gaiety of consumerism... perhaps older even than Christianity.

‘That’s one of the reasons we’re so excited by carols that started life as medieval folk dance tunes, wilder and weirder than the usual prudish Christian stuff.’

Clair added ‘A lot of people struggle at Christmas, thinking they need to repress their more painful feelings, to wear a fake smile for other people. We want to get back to a festival where we can enjoy light and love without shutting out the darkness of midwinter.

‘That seems especially important now, witnessing this time of such suffering and conflict. A lot of our music is about how to process pain and suffering, how to reexperience and transform them.

The duo this week released an album to go with the performance called Yulatraktors – Solstice Wyrd.

Clair said: ‘The record is a long semi-improvised piece blending many old folk carols into a kind of psychedelic journey into Yule. We’re very inspired by early experimental folk music from the 1970s, by soundtracks to things like The Box of Delights (BBC 1984), and by the contemporary interest in paganism, reconnecting with the land and the seasons.’

They say the album is best listened to in the dark.

It’s family reasons that bring the duo back to the island.

‘Clair’s sister met a lovely Isle of Man man, married him, and then Clair’s parents moved over too,’ Carli said.

‘We’ve played one packed out show before in Dalby, which is an amazing cultural hub attached to a tiny Gothic revival church.

‘We’re over again for solstice and thought, what a perfect place to do a Yulatraktors show!

‘We love the island, and actually every time we’ve come over on the Steam Packet we’ve been recognised by someone who’s seen us at a music festival — which is really weird because it’s one of the only places that’s ever happened.’

The pair turned heads when their percussion and vocals debut This Is Broken Folk made MOJO’s Top Ten Folk Albums of 2019 and again when their second studio album The Missing Star reached MOJO’s number two in 2021.

Lunatraktors received the British Music Collection LGBTQ+ Composer Award 2021 and George Butterworth Award 2022.

The concert at the Dalby Schoolrooms starts at 7pm on December 20.

Tickets (£15) include a mince pie and mulled wine.

They are available online at www.wegottickets.com/event/599485