11.04.25: Alison Cotton (UK) + Emil Palme (DK)
British goth-folk and minimalist guitar explorations
Join us for a night of drone-folk when Final Descent and Fanø Free Folk Festival invite you to Valby Kulturhus for a double concert featuring British artist Alison Cotton and local musician Emil Palme.
Alison Cotton's dark and mysterious music is a journey into the shadowy corners of the mind. Melancholic loops of vocals and viola merge into hypnotic, elongated soundscapes that exist somewhere between psychedelic free-folk, goth, and doom.
Emil Palme is a composer and guitarist whose practice is rooted in Scandinavian folklore and experimental music. His expanded guitar techniques are further explored on his second solo release, Death by Angel, which this concert celebrates the release of.
Friday 11.04.2025
Doors: 19.00
Show: 20.00
Price: 130 Dkr
Venue: Valby Kulturhus, Valgårdsvej 4, 2500 Valby
Alison Cotton (UK):
Since making her solo album debut in 2018, Alison Cotton has established herself as one of the leading figures in the new wave of experimental British folk music.
With a foundation of looped, chanting vocals and mournful violas, Cotton crafts enigmatic and otherworldly soundscapes where the dark, timeless spirit of folk music drifts between a wealth of influences – from psychedelic neo-folk and goth rock to grand choral compositions and crushing doom.
In 2024, Cotton released her sixth solo album, Engelchen – a concept album that tells the true story of sisters Ida and Louise Cook from Sunderland in 1930s Nazi-occupied Europe. Through the international networks they built via their passion for opera, they helped numerous Jewish people escape from Germany and Poland in the years leading up to World War II. Those they saved affectionately called them Engelchen, and their story is one of remarkable courage and compassion.
Emil Palme (DK):
Death by Angel is Emil Palme’s second solo album—a "doom requiem" that illustrates the journey from life to the afterlife. The music is inspired by ancient mythology, where the angel of death guides our soul through the unknown. Each movement in the piece is a passage, representing the inevitable journey that all living beings must take.
Stones are drawn like bows across the strings of the electric guitar, producing chanting and lamenting patterns that evoke a dystopian and ceremonial primal sound. Straddling the boundary between composition and improvisation, this technique unfolds the music in an organic and unpredictable way.
There is a kind of primal force and vital simplicity in the expression, reminiscent of certain corners of Morton Feldman’s work or the new Malone/O'Malley coalition.
Death by Angel is released on the new Danish label Vasen and follows Palme’s 2023 debut album, Ripen.