01. I Still Know You Are Calling My Name (01:45)
02. I Am! (06:53)
03. What Were Those Words You Spoke to Me? (06:31)
04. The Night It Darkens All Around Me (05:43)
05. The Final Harvest (01:30)
06. A Storm in Morwenstow (03:59)
07. Sprigs of Heather (04:44)
08. Round of the Red Cape (02:16)
09. The Gods Laugh at Those Who Make Plans (06:32)

“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

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.

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“Raging elements and the heaviest heart,
But I’m travelling south to be with you once more”

Glitterbeat Records have confirmed the signing of north-east England born, London-based artist Alison Cotton, and announced the release of her remarkable new album The Gods Laugh. Alison has previously released her music on a fine selection of UK indie labels – Bloxham Tapes, Rocket Recordings, Cardinal Fuzz, Clay Pipe Music – but Glitterbeat’s tak:til imprint, which includes artists such as Brìghde Chaimbeul, Širom and Cerys Hafana, feels like the perfect home for her meditative, drone-based take on folk music. 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: “to work predominantly with the instruments I play and own… these parameters have grown as my music has evolved but mainly because I’ve bought new instruments. As for the sound, I really just play what comes naturally to me and it comes out in a folky way. The drone element started almost as a necessity, as I often use it as a base to play other parts over when I’m improvising. My first album was mainly just viola and vocals and, it worked well playing and singing over a viola or omnichord drone.”

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. “I had no melody worked out, I just sang them over the drone, the melody came to me and we kept the first take to keep it raw and natural, just a kind of ghost story and my thoughts in that moment”. 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. “Many of the ideas somehow just came to me in the brief period of time when he was dying“, Alison explains. “I think I was thinking more creatively than usual throughout that period as being creative has always helped me with pain and loss.“ The brief, melancholy tune The Final Harvest is about Alison’s dad’s final visit to his beloved allotment. “He just wasn’t well enough to work there anymore, which, of course was devastating. He brought me vegetables that day for the very last time and I took them home and cooked with them and froze as many of these meals as I could as I wanted to preserve them for as long as possible… so, The Final Harvest is, I guess, about wanting to hold onto these memories after the death of a loved one.”

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.” Alison felt driven to record the poem because “I felt there was something very song-like about the structure. There was such a haunting, melodic, almost hymn-like feel … the song begins with a minimal drone accompaniment to accentuate the feeling of isolation in the words and crescendos into staccato and harmonic viola, drums and the cawing of crows. It’s the first song I recorded for this album.”

Alison 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 and Engelchen, The Gods Laugh feels like the fulfilment of incredible promise.