Packing out Didcot’s excellent live music venue, the Peatbog Faeries drew a crowd as diverse as the music on offer.

Described as ‘Celtic fusion’, at their heart they’re a folk band with some cracking pipe tunes. No, make that a trance band with atmospheric low whistle and a fiddler with a whole array of effects pedals. The sound of the Peatbog Faeries is so hard to pin down that they’ve been described before as ‘acid croft’.

They played a mixture of traditional tunes and original compositions blended folk with styles as diverse as 70s Hammond organ to 90s trance. The vast soundscapes created by the keyboards and programming were cut through by the fiddle and pipes like a ray of sunlight through a highland mist.

What really stood out was the huge skill in the arrangement of the music, with each tune leading you through a story, with moments of euphoria as the fiddle and pipes kicked in following a meandering whistle line.

On a couple of occasions we were even treated to the story behind the tune: the ‘Jakes on the plane' referred to a couple of band members having a bevvy too many while on tour; another song was written by a friend for his mum who had washed his woollen piping socks after every second gig for a year! The warmth and charisma of frontman, Peter Morris was as much a part of the show as the lust for life bobbing of guitarist Tom Salter and the rocking fiddle of Ross Couper.

The Peatbog Faeries are a band who put their all into their performance. The tremendous instrumental talent, the tunes and the sheer energy of the band had, by the end of the night, seeped irresistibly out to the audience and had the whole room on its feet: no mean feat in tiered seating!