Label: Friendly Recordings
Release date: 05.11.2021
‘All Is Quiet At The Ancient Theatre’ begins in cold droned echoes of Nico’s ‘Frozen Warnings’ but Alison Cotton laments vanishing English customs, performance and countryside. Viola, harmonium and recorders bring lost sounds - the deathly percussive march of ‘A Tragedy In The Tithe Barn’, ballad themes of departure in ‘The Bells of St. Agnes’. Cotton’s music searches a past of stillness and desolation but where Nico’s is an icy tundra, Cotton’s viola and choral layers hold earthy, distinctly English experimental resonances with early music modalities. It’s mournful, yes, but with contemplative spaces of light and renewal.
ll Is Quiet At The Ancient
Theatre
The Last Sense To Leave
Us
36 Dramatic Situations
The Bells of St Agnes
A Tragedy in the Tithe
Barn