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PREORDER
Ships When IN STOCK.
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ARTIST
TITLE
The Gods Laugh
FORMAT
CD
LABEL
CATALOG #
FTR 850CD
FTR 850CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
7/17/2026
Co-released with Glitterbeat Records. Alison Cotton's fifth solo album is a mesmerizing weave of haunted atmospherics and avant-folk songcraft. Built around her viola, harmonium, and transportive vocals, the album moves between stark drone passages and more layered arrangements with piano, percussion, and synths. The Gods Laugh is a work of quiet, sublime intensity, cementing Cotton's unique space in the contemporary English music scene -- a space where richly textured sonics meet tradition, and deeply personal compositions evoke the experimental spirit of artists like Nico, John Cale, and Dorothy Carter. The Gods Laugh is a powerful restatement of all the things that make her music so transporting and immersive, but with a deeper emotional resonance resulting from a period of personal loss and upheaval. Alison has been recording for almost 30 years -- in bands like Saloon, The Eighteenth Day of May, and The Left Outsides -- and her solo career, which started with a cassette release a decade ago, came about almost by accident. But in the ensuing years, Alison has developed a singular and affecting style according to parameters she set herself. For The Gods Laugh, Alison played viola, harmonium, piano, hammer dulcimer, treble recorder, melodica, bowed cymbal and percussion, while her partner/producer Mark Nicholas played drums, bass and synths (their first use on a Cotton album). As usual, the songs are mostly improvised and recorded in one take, layering instruments over a drone base. The exception is "The Night it Darkens All Around Me," which was semi-improvised and with lyrics captured in an almost stream of consciousness style. The album also includes more piano, notably on "Sprigs of Heather," an epistolary continuation of a tale begun on earlier releases. Alison's father passed away in 2024 and as well as gifting her the album's title and having encouraged her to take up the viola in the first place, his presence is felt throughout the album. The brief, melancholy tune "The Final Harvest" is about Alison's dad's final visit to his beloved allotment. The only song written before this period of loss was Alison's setting of Victorian rural poet John Clare's I Am! Alison had been playing this live for some time but felt it "moulded perfectly with the feel of the rest of the album." Cotton occupies a unique place in the current English music scene, the way that often quite experimental drones of her work meshes with the more traditional elements seeing her included with artists like Nico, John Cale and Dorothy Carter. After remarkable releases like The Portrait You Painted of Me (FTR 658LP) and Engelchen (FTR 765LP), The Gods Laugh feels like the fulfilment of incredible promise.
"Cotton may expand folk's raw emotions into more avant garde territories, but they still feel possessed by a blood-red muscle memory that goes back centuries." - The Quietus
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