Saturday 7 December 2019, 7.30pm
'gorgeous, hazy, distant-but-intimate dream pop' — Gorilla vs Bear
Maria Somerville draws on conventional folk forms alongside post-punk, traditional Irish motifs, starry eyed pop and hypnotic drones to create wholly original music that is borne of her roots in Connemara, Western Ireland.
Her debut album All My People (self-released on 1 March and distributed by Rush Hour), channels the wilderness of the Irish landscape through dense, ethereal soundscapes, bare boned percussion and a heady electronic undertow, interspersed with ghostly vocals that are ever present and all encompassing, like crystalline glints of sunshine peeking through dark stormy clouds.
Her enigmatic and enthralling live show comes in both solo and band shape (born of ties with fellow Irish mavericks Davy Kehoe and the Wah Wah Wino crew).
'With lazily strummed electric guitar and full-bodied organ chords shining through the lo-fi production like a milky sun, she waltzes through the shoegazing ballad with wonderment' — The Guardian
ALISON COTTON is a viola player based in London working in composition and improvisation. Her debut album ’All Is Quiet at the Ancient Theatre’ was released in 2018 firstly on cassette on Bloxham Tapes, followed by a vinyl release on Cardinal Fuzz (UK) and Feeding Tube (USA). In July 2019 her longform piece, ‘Behind the Spiderweb Gates’ was released on the Australian label, Longform Editions. As well as the viola, she uses an array of other instruments (her voice, harmonium, percussion, recorder, omnichord, shruti box and piano) to create long, haunting folk drones. Cotton’s new album ‘The Portrait You Painted of Me’, is a 6-track record – her first for Rocket Recordings. ‘Mumurations Over the Moor’ is a wordless piece of layered vocals, drifting like fog towards a sunset over the green undulations of North East England. ‘The Last Wooden Ship’ evokes the shipyards of Sunderland, laced with piano and percussion events, while her voice calls out like a siren urging listeners to a rocky demise.
https://alisoncotton-uk.bandcamp.com
TARA CLERKIN TRIO formed in Bristol (where none of them are from yet all of whom are deeply engrained) in 2020. Despite the singular authority implied by its name, they consist of the titular Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Sunny’s brother, Patrick Benjamin. With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 debut, this upcoming Somewhere Good LP (out now) is, in many ways, the band’s most realised work. In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic (*an overused adjective for which here there is regrettably no sufficient alternative) approaches, Clerkin & Co. color in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes - never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification - allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before. There are elements of avant-pop, modern classical, kraut-folk, audio verité, and nods to trip hop, but Tara Clerkin Trio have fun transcending easy categorisation.
