Preview: Alula Down / Pefkin – Star & Shadow (20.11.25)

The lads from The Unit Ama only promote a handful of gigs each year, but then their quality control is remarkably high, this killer double bill being a fine example. Folk duo (and partners) Alula Down (Kate Gathercole and Mark Waters) have been largely self-releasing CD-Rs, cassettes and lathe cut vinyl for a couple of decades (with the occasional small label release), recorded in their shed (‘The Radar Station’, presumably a Captain Beefheart nod). What Alula Down do is pretty special: they record a mix of traditional folk songs (Katie Cruel, Master Kilby, Polly Vaughan) and originals but their process involves happenstance and environment: storms, passing jet planes, nature sounds and the rest aren’t just left in, they’re an essential element in their often magical releases. They seem a quiet pair – releases creep out – but they’ve still managed to earn a fair measure of acclaim from the people who know about such things. They also provided the music and sound design for a stage version of Max Porter’s impossibly great novella Lanny, which earns them a huge amount of respect, from me at least. All that and their daughter / occasional collaborator is Jacken Elswyth, the remarkable banjo player / deconstructor in Shovel Dance Collective.

If you’ve had the tremendous good fortune to catch Burd Ellen live, you’ll have seen Pefkin (aka Gayle Brogan): intensely focused on a table full of arcane acoustic instruments, percussion and electronics, summoning spirits from e-Bows and autoharps and bells. Like Alula Down, Pefkin also has a couple of decades worth of small label releases, a score or so of intriguing, immersive, mystifying ‘slowly-unfolding, ritualistic hymnals’. Brogan emerged from Electroscope (part of that ‘bedroom psychedelia’ sound shared with people like Pram and Broadcast) to make music that is far more experimental, earning comparisons to the likes of Coil and Popol Vuh (two of the best possible references, surely?). Live and on record, her music is evocative, innovative and genuinely wonderful. Tickets are still available from the Star & Shadow website and you really should come.