ALISON COTTON

Lugubrious, ruminative, and sonorous - Alison Cotton has always imbued her records with a heaviness of context, of narrative, of emotion, and 'Engelchen' is no different with the drive and determination of the "little angels" of the album's title weighing somberly on each roaring string.

'Engelchen' is a transporting work whose spirit is situated in a very specific time and place. 'Engelchen' literally translates as ‘little angels’. What’s more, for many in the febrile, dangerous era of the 1930s in Nazi-occupied Europe, as they wrote letters to arrange their paths out of danger as refugees, these were Ida and Louise Cook. Secretly, these resourceful and eccentric women were using their musical obsessions as a means to help dozens of refugees escape with their lives. Throughout, this story is relayed by Alison, whether acapella or by means of richly emotive string arrangements, with a deftness of touch, sensitivity and intensity that matches the feverish nature of the experiences and the unforgiving environs in which they took place.