Al Wootton
Glorias
Lith Dolina
As he mentioned in a First Floor interview late last year, Al Wootton has a thing for the Spanish Civil War. That interest first surfaced in his music via 2024’s Albacete Knife EP, but it’s even more explicit on Glorias, a slow-brewing, emotionally stirring 13-minute composition that might be the most symphonic thing he’s ever written. (Just FYI, aside from the original track, the record also contains both a stripped-down “Drums Version” and a more pensive “Drumless Version.”) Utilizing both field recordings of the Spanish countryside and samples of Spanish composers who were exiled in the aftermath of the war, Glorias carries an obvious historical and psychic weight, yet the music veers away from the UK producer’s usual dark and dubby meditations. Part of that is due to the mere presence of melody—which rarely appears in Wootton’s work these days—but the robust string passages also convey a certain sense of grandeur, as though they’re paying tribute to those who lost their lives in defense of something greater than themselves.