Tak:Til News

Mit "The Gods Laugh" erreicht Alison Cotton einen neuen Grad an emotionaler Tiefe und klanglicher Klarheit. Das Album ist ein eindringliches Werk zwischen Folk, Drone und Minimalismus, getragen von Improvisation, Wiederholung und einer meditativen Offenheit. Ausgehend von langsam kreisenden Drones entfalten sich Stücke von großer innerer Spannung, die Raum für Intuition und Resonanz lassen. Entstanden in einer Phase persönlicher Umbrüche, wirkt The Gods Laugh zugleich fragil und kraftvoll. Alison Cotton arbeitet überwiegend mit akustischen Instrumenten - Viola, Harmonium, Klavier, Dulcimer, Recorder - ergänzt durch sparsame rhythmische und elektronische Akzente. Die meist in einem Take eingespielten Aufnahmen bewahren eine besondere Unmittelbarkeit. Das Album bestätigt Alison Cotton als eine der eigenständigsten Stimmen der zeitgenössischen britischen Folktradition - experimentell, erdverbunden und zutiefst berührend.

"The beauty of Jiha's work lies in the spaces she leaves" - The Guardian
The highly acclaimed Korean multi-instrumentalist and composer Park
Jiha, returns with a luminous third album
A deep meditation on the intersection of music and light, The Gleam further
extends Jiha's reputation for uncompromising sonic explorations. Pop Matters
called her musical art "a near flawless fusion of folk tradition and new
composition."
How often do we consider light? We revel in the soft wonder of a sunrise or the
majesty of a glorious sunset, but all through the day its quality and texture is
continually changing, second by second, in ways we rarely register. That beauty is
the inspiration for The Gleam.
"The Gleam continues Park Jiha's solo expedition into experimental Korean
neoclassical braindance. Once again, she plays all the instruments herself – piri
(an oboe), saenghwang (a multi-pipe mouth organ), yanggeum (a dulcimer) and
glockenspiel – overdubbing multiple parts to build songs that shimmer with
levels and degrees of light." - The Wire: Adventures In Modern Music Upcoming
live shows

The follow-up to Johnson’s lauded Balsams album, The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar.
This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider palette of sounds, adding strings and piano, to dive deeper into the sound bath of Johnson’s meditative music. The Cinder Grove is a profound, affecting statement on the nature of loss and irreplaceability as well as a major addition to the canon of Johnson’s increasingly seminal work.