Dot Allison is a trip hop singer-songwriter and the former vocalist with One Dove, a Scottish electronic music group active in the early 1990s. Her new solo album ‘Consciousology’ is released this month and finds the multi-instrumentalist joined by the London Contemporary Orchestra as well as new labelmate Andy Bell of Ride, who plays guitar on two tracks, and Hannah Peel, who is responsible for some of the string arrangements with both the LCO and a stellar group of Scottish string players.
The album opens with `Shyness Of Crowns` with a recurring rhythmic pulse, strummed riff and orchestrated strings allowing vocals that are gently shared in a breathily sung / spoken word manner. We have a brief oboe or clarinet segment at around the two third mark which I must admit I’d liked to have heard more of. I read that `Unchanged` is a love song, “albeit one about “being in a process with someone where you love, lose and grieve the love-bond alone, while the other person appears to remain unchanged throughout.” Make of that what you will but the track is a stop start affair with strummed guitar or similar and becomes fairly dreamlike as it progresses.
`Bleached By The Sun` is a fairly ethereal composition and floats along becoming pretty mesmerising as it evolves, broken occasionally with a string arrangement. I read that the singer said that `Moon Flowers` is about recognising “our synergistic place in the complex network of all life, and to respect the living quantum systems we seem intent on continually interrupting.” It was a spellbinding submission that had me drifting off into everyday thoughts of my own.
`220Hz` is a kind of electro submission that has a Theremin join briefly midway before resuming its spectral journey. The singer shared that 220Hz is “the frequency at which tree roots communicate beneath the ground in the ‘wood wide web'”. The singer recorded the electrical activity in a plant which was then translated into pitch variations on `Double Rainbow` which is a varied and pretty trippy amalgamation of sounds.
`Milk And Honey` has a rhythmic plucked guitar chord running throughout with delicate vocals and orchestrated strings. We have in `Mother Tree` a number that was inspired by Canadian scientist Suzanne Simard’s writings on the trees which act as central hubs for vast below-ground mycorrhizal network. It for me was a further dreamlike, trancelike almost otherworldly composition.
`Weeping Roses` closes out this long player and was inspired by a tape gifted to Dot by the late Andrew Weatherall which included two songs by Tim Hardin. It`s pretty stripped back with guitar and vocal but piano and drums are interspersed throughout. A pretty minimal offering but highly effective, nevertheless.
‘Consciousology’ is what I would class as mood music where your temperament or disposition at the time of listening will really colour the effect it will have on you. There`s a real intensity about this album and I found it quite overwhelming at times.
Rating 8 / 10
