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In My End is My Beginning

by MacGillivray

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1.
Prelude 00:20
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about

MacGillivray’s eighth solo album is inspired by the words of Mary Queen of Scots and draws influences from French chanson, the troubadour tradition and contemporaneous composition by William Byrd.

Released on the 435th anniversary of Mary’s death, the album opens with the creaking stairs Mary is said to have descended on her way to execution from Fotheringhay Castle. The record transposes sonnets and letters written by Mary, with Quand Vous L’Aimiez and Que Suis-Je Hélas? sung in her first language to capture the exact meaning of her words.

The album is performed with air encapsulated at sites and on dates specific to each song – Linlithgow Palace on the anniversary of her birth, Loch Leven where she was imprisoned, and at Fotheringhay on the anniversary of her death. Haar Cradle Song is introduced by the creak of her son James VI’s cradle, recorded at Traquair House.

Love is a God (Rizzio’s Bloodstain) contains the only surviving song lyrics by Mary’s doomed secretary and guitar tutor, David Riccio (or Rizzio) and features pipes by Crisdean MacDonald, recorded on location in the cave in Elgol on the Isle of Skye in which Bonnie Prince Charlie is believed to have sheltered while on the run.

The lyrics for In Dreams that Snow in Dream are taken from The Gaelic Garden of the Dead – a poetry collection authored by MacGillivray to accompany this record, available from Bloodaxe Books. In it are published 35 deconstructed sonnets to Mary (one for each step she descended on her way to execution) which were chewed, ground and spat out for fifteen minutes – the length of time her lips were said to move after decapitation.

MacGillvray accompanies herself on dulcitone, dulcimer, Indian harmonium, peddle harmonium, electric autoharp, melodica and prepared piano. The dulcitone was chosen for two reasons; as a Scottish instrument (made in Glasgow in the 1800s) and for its diamantine, crystal sound in reference to Mary’s frequent use of diamond imagery in her work – particularly The Diamond Speaks. The texture of the record is at once cinematic and deathly intimate, drawing together the creaking wood and dust of the spaces recorded in, while ventriloquising the sensitivity and intelligence of its subject to haunting, bone-rattling effect.

credits

released February 8, 2022

Lyrics, arrangements, instrumentation and performance by MacGillivray .
Mixed and co-produced with Ben Chatwin at Vennel Studios. Chatwin composes, arranges and performs electronica on tracks 6, 7, 9 and 10. Cover image by Alexis Thompson.

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antigen records Ipswich, UK

DIY record label / niche interest vanity project, still operating out of a bedroom on a council estate in Ipswich.

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