The Girl I Left Behind Me, by Alison Cotton

The Girl I Left Behind Me

by Alison Cotton

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Full Digital Discography

12

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Get all 12 The Left Outsides releases available on Bandcamp and save 30%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Alison Cotton Live at Cafe Oto, London - 27 October 2021, The Girl I Left Behind Me, Are You Sure I Was There?, Only Darkness Now, A Place to Hide, Behind the Spider Web Gate, All Is Quiet At The Ancient Theatre, All That Remains, and 4 more. , and , .

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10" Transparent pale blue vinyl
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Reverse board cover and printed inner sleeve. 500 hand-numbered copies were pressed on the Clay Pipe Music label in 2019. Here are 10 artist copies for sale. Download code in sleeve. Strictly one copy per person

Includes unlimited streaming of The Girl I Left Behind Me via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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	1.	The Girl I Left Behind Me 12:54		buy track
	2.	The House of the Famous Poet 13:16		buy track

about

In 2018, Alison was commissioned by BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe to create a soundtrack to the Muriel Spark ghost story ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’. It was broadcast at Christmas and read by Bronwen Price. In the story, the narrator works in a London office, her first job after a long illness. As she leaves work one evening she is struck by a strong conviction that she has left something important at the office, but can't work out what it can be. Alison based this track around a simple melody composition following the form of the narrative, building up the suspense as the story draws to a dramatic and unexpected conclusion.

For the second side of the 10” Alison has created another piece inspired by a Muriel Spark ghost story ‘The House of the Famous Poet.’ This is also set in London, this time in 1944 against the wartime backdrop of the Blitz and V-1 sirens. On a delayed train journey, the narrator meets a soldier and a girl named Elise. Elise, a maid, invites the narrator to stay at the house where she works as the owners are away. The house turns out to be the home of a famous poet who the narrator greatly admires. The following morning, the story takes on a surreal nightmarish quality, when the soldier from the train turns up at the house with an enormous box that he says contains an ‘Abstract Funeral’ which he proceeds to sell to the protagonist. Later that day, both Elsie & the famous poet are killed when a bomb hits the poet's house.

It was the idea of the abstract funeral that inspired Alison to create this piece; “The viola has a naturally mournful tone, and I endeavoured to capture the mood of how I'd imagine an 'abstract funeral' march would sound. My viola was completely improvised here, recorded in a single take. My layered vocals enhancing the melancholy and the crescendo of cymbals adding to the solemnity of the drama".

credits

released December 4, 2020

Written and performed by Alison Cotton
Recorded by Mark Nicholas, mixed by Mark Nicholas and Alison Cotton
Cymbals on 'The House of the Famous Poet' by Alison Cotton and Mark Nicholas.
Design and Illustration by Frances Castle
Mastering by Ed Deegan at Gizzard Studio.

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The Left Outsides London, UK

The Left Outsides are: Mark Nicholas and Alison Cotton, a wife and husband duo based in London, England whose atmospheric, hypnotic songs echo Nico's icy European folk, pastoral psychedelia and chilly English fields at dawn.

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