Description

Billy MacKenzie – Beyond The Sun

Available on CD & 12″ heavyweight vinyl for the first time ever.

William MacArthur “Billy” MacKenzie was a Scottish singer, with a distinctive high tenor voice; he was best known as a member of The Associates.

“It remains a cruel irony that MacKenzie’s most coherent solo work, Beyond The Sun, was completed posthumously, following his suicide in January 1997. The record had a troubled genesis, and arguments remain about who did what, but it remains an elegant, powerful work, which balances MacKenzie’s easy command of the heartbroken ballad and his need to experiment. There is a sense of gloom, never more than on the title track, with its funereal piano, and a whispered vocal in which the singer gazes into a glorious, impossible future.

MacKenzie’s impetuosity was non-negotiable. He was grieving for his mother, and simultaneously imagining three albums – electronic, rock and (the one his new label Nude favoured) an acoustic album, with the singer framed as a more impish Scott Walker. He lost interest before the album was finished, and it was constructed from demos made with pianist Steve Aungle, and produced by Simon Raymonde, of Cocteau Twins, and Pascal Gabriel.

The finished work is perhaps closer to the record company’s wishes than MacKenzie’s more manic imaginings. But that’s no bad thing. It inhabits a contradiction, being mournful and resilient, lyrically oblique and emotionally translucent.” – Uncut

Tracklist:
1. Give Me Time
2. Winter Academy
3. Blue It Is
4. 14 Mirrors
5. At The Edge Of The World
6. Beyond The Sun
7. And This She Knows
8. Sour Jewel
9. Gypsies In A Restaurant
10. Nocturne VII