Clogs
The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton (Brassland)

The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton is Clogs' highly anticipated fifth album. It's a song-cycle composed by Padma Newsome for Clogs with extensive vocal work from Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond. Other guests include Sufjan Stevens, Aaron Dessner and Matt Berninger of The National and the Osso String Quartet.

Following Clogs' critically acclaimed Lantern (2006), The Creatures is their first album of songs after four primarilty instrumental releases. The work was composed by member Padma Newsome during a 2005 residency at Giardini La Mortella, sponsored by the Fromm Foundation. The Garden is a rich botanical paradise created by Lady Walton (the widow of the late British composer Sir William Walton) on the island of Ischia, in the Bay of Naples in Italy. The album was recorded in stages, in Brooklyn and Sydney during 2007-08, with another year and a half for mixing and finishing to get it just right. It embodies some of the fortunate vagaries of creating music with 4 people in 3 cities on 2 continents, not to mention the cadre of additional musicians who brought their own presence of character to the project.

Clogs are four musicians (Bryce Dessner, guitar; Rachael Elliot, basson; Thomas Kozumplik, percussion; and Padma Newsome, viola) from the U.S. and Australia whose work traverse time and place and through which seemingly disparate influences are seamlessly drawn in. They compose and improvise using sounds and textures from across the musical spectrum - the immediacy of folk and rock music, twisted Americana, and the complexity of modern composition.

back to top