The first edition of the Isobel Gowdie project: a full 8" square 16-page booklet of artwork and lyrics, plus a cd of the album. This concept album is a collaboration between artist Julia Jeffrey and Gillian Chadwick of Ex Reverie. Working closely together for years, Gillian wrote songs and Julia created full-scale paintings inspired by the legendary confessions of Isobel Gowdie. Put on trial for witchcraft in 1662, Isobel's testimonies are infamous and as powerful today as they have ever been.
Recorded with a version of Ex Reverie composed of some of Glasgow's finest musicians (members of Big Hogg, The Hidden Masters, Trembling Bells, and Trashcan Sinatras) on location in an old mill building in the shadow of castle ruins in Strathaven, Scotland, the album takes a heavy psychedelic trip through the world of a defiant witch. Full of powerful freedom and gleeful malice, Isobel's story is one of raw sexual and magical energy. A woman under heavy societal and religious restrictions, Isobel chose the act of total rebellion in the face of danger and judgement. A complicated and inspiring heroine for our times.
Includes unlimited streaming of Isobel Gowdie
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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lyrics
All you fine lords and ladies in gold
Bar your doors, call your guards
An unholy wind seems to cry your name
Not a door in your house can keep it out
All you good god-fearing neighbors
Cast your eyes on us with scorn
Implore with extra prayers for safety
At the Sunday mass at the Kirk of Auldearn
When the sun sinks and you’ve gone home
At the Reader’s desk, it’s our turn
We fall to our knees with our hair in our faces
And it’s our lord who sits there with one cruel hand on his black book
Baptized as a babe
I renounced it all that day
One hand each on my head and my feet
And I pledged everything between
Set your controls for the heart of the next closest sun that you can find. This is the soundtrack for transfiguration, divination and disintegration. You will absolutely lose yourself in this psychedelic eddy of drones, swoops, and other-worldly glister. Aurora Borealis is highly redolent of the closing credits for the classic TV show UFO, full of foreboding and a bubbling under the surface menace Paul Sands