The trio of Robin Alderton, Daniel Merrill and Nathaniel Robin Mann have been charting the outer reaches of free folk since 2002. Their music has been described as “acutely haunting and occasionally brutal” while remaining elusive and almost impossible to pigeonhole. It is neither improvised nor entirely composed; its exact form never predetermined. Their slowly evolving, multi-layered instrumentals have been embraced by a post-rock audience, while the band’s work remains primarily informed by pre-rock traditions, assimilating broad folk influences from the fife and drums of Scotland to the two-mile swamp hollers of North Carolina.

Their recorded work has incorporated fragments of traditional Hebridean melodies, for the soundtrack of The Guga Hunters of Ness, a film by Mike Day documenting the harvesting of gannets from the desolate isle of Sula Sgeir. They have thrown themselves into the rough music of the charivari, armed with an array of tuned meat cleavers, with performances echoing Indonesian gamelan, campanology and the vigilante “rough bands” of East Anglia. They have sought out the campaign songs of the canal builders, to perform on The Cut – a three week canal boat tour, taking them from London to Bristol via the industrial arteries of England.

In 2015, Dead Rat Orchestra collaborated with director James Holcombe to create the soundtrack to Tyburnia: A Radical History Of 600 Years Of Public Execution. The film explored parallels between contemporary and historical notions of crime in relation to business and property and the spectacular nature of punishment. Their critically-acclaimed soundtrack featured newly-rediscovered broadside ballads, written by and for those condemned to dance the Tyburn Jig, intercut with psychogeographical field recordings, musique concrète and lost songs in the Thieves’ Cant.

The band toured Tyburnia in 2016 and again in 2017 with Lisa Knapp, performing a live soundtrack  to James Holcombe’s multi-screen projections.

In July 2018, DRO embarked upon their Free Folk in Brexit Britain tour with Polish trio Sutari – a tour exploring the cultural impact of Polish (and other European) migration in the UK.

Their live performances and onsite installations have been experienced across Europe, Canada and Northeast Africa, and their soundtracks have featured on BBC Television, ZDF and at Tate Modern. They have composed works for performance by the London Contemporary Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia and the Ukranian Conservatoire; and collaborated and toured with artists as diverse as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Eric Chenaux, Silver Mt Zion, Hanged Up, C Joynes and Baby Dee.

“The only tradition upheld by the Orchestra is that of the flexible nature of pre-recorded roots music, when songs and ideas would be passed around from musician to musician, rewritten and rearranged to suit new circumstances and players. As such they are the anti-Mumfords, subverting the stolid conservatism that has come to be associated with much of today's folk music and reconstructing it from the ground up.” – The Quietus

“The Dead Rats, barefoot and bearded, have cast aside all cool.” – The Wire