Alula Down

ALULA DOWN (Kate Gathercole & Mark Waters) make music that is born of relationship, exploring connection with the land and with the ordinariness of our human-being.
Recognising that many traditional/vernacular (‘folk’) songs illuminate dispossession and inequality, Alula Down explore the divisions between self and other - including the other-than-human - and treat the ecology of place as a point of communion, not as an uninvolved landscape.
With eclectic musical roots, they make use of collage, improvisation and field recording. Their explorations of folk song and their own self written songs are underpinned with drone and textured soundscape. They are gentle influencers on the alt-folk scene, and have been acclaimed by The Guardian ‘Folk Album of the Month’.
Kate & Mark live in Herefordshire and have played music together since they first met. Current musical collaborations include work with multi-award winning author Max Porter, singing and playing with psych-folk band Sproatly Smith, improv noise making with rushes/esp, and a-cappella singing with the Bushel Bag Carollers. They are also choir leaders - singing seasonal traditional folk songs with local communities, and part of the Weirdshire Collective - putting on shows featuring left-field and experimental live music.

What people say
Shovel Dance Collective, Freak Zone Playlist, BBC Sounds, December 2022:
“Alula Down spent 2020 into 2021 recording a series of 4 seasonal albums each engaged with and rooted in the landscapes and soundscapes of their Herefordshire home (…) These resonate with and helped to inspire our treatment of the Thames on our new album, and hold a quality both eternal and contemporary that the album reaches for …”.

Jude Rogers, The Guardian, August 2020:
”Echoing rain blends with shuddering drones and lyrics. Post-rock and ambient fans will relish the shape-shifting textures. Gathercole’s voice is featherlight and meaningful, recalling Vashti Bunyan and late 60s private-press folk, tethering the listener to every syllable.”

Verity Sharp, playing Sprig of Thyme on Late Junction, 16th February 2024:
“You don’t only have to go looking for love in the human world – if you just open your heart to everything that you hear and feel and sense in nature, if you take a walk or sit in the open, you start to develop a similar sense of deep connection. Kate Gathercole is one member of a duo called Alula Down, and she takes this idea a step further. She channels those kind of feelings into what she calls Hedge Singing – I love that – taking the old songs, which often reference trees and plants, outdoors, and just singing them back – with love.”

Find us
Website: www.aluladown.uk
Bandcamp: aluladown.bandcamp.com
Spotify and other streaming platforms.
Email: kate@aluladown.uk / markbass64@gmail.com