Aural Aggravation

‘All the Bees’ are Kirsty McGee and Gitika Partington, two highly experienced writer-musicians who have created an exciting new album of gentle yet deep, pastoral alt-folk that brings together their distinctive styles into a crisp, fresh new collaboration that weaves its stunning, reflective songs like gossamer threads around the ear.

McGee is an award-winning wandering maverick and spellbinding live performer who has been releasing music and performing all over the world for over twenty years. Her fans include Emma Watson and Danny Boyle, for whose 2014 thriller ‘Trance’ the song ‘Sandman’ provided a cornerstone, both in its original version and covered by lead actress Rosario Dawson.

Partington, has had a similarly vibrant and varied career in music to date, releasing seven albums which have achieved critical acclaim and national airplay from likes of BBC 6 Music. She has created 4 books of multi-genre choral acapella arrangements published by OUP and Hal Leonard and multi layered vocal tracks for Warner Chappell and Peermusic. During the lockdown of Spring 2020, she directed nearly 100 community singers and produced 9 award winning, original, quirky virtual choir videos of her choral arrangements.

Introspective, heartfelt and unashamed of straying into poetry, the pair’s lyrics focus on nature themes and cycles including loss, death and rebirth. Following the ethereal ‘Wildflowers’, the second single from the album, ‘King Crow’ is a nostalgic banjo-flecked vocal epic which shows off Partington’s finely honed expertise in choral arranging and McGee’s meandering flute to create a striking evocative ode to the king of the birds, ‘King Crow’.

On the development of ‘King Crow’, Partington explains; "King Crow was one of the early songs on the album, I was still finding a way of highlighting parts of the lyric with vocal washes and bringing into being the ‘All the Bees’ sound. I had a lot of fun creating the end section of the song, so it felt like there was a whole Royal Hall of earthly singers with good solid work boots on who are singing their praises to the King Crow. I wish I had filmed me stomping and wailing whilst recording the track in different areas of my flat. I definitely woke the baby next-door, but they didn’t make it onto the album.”

McGee and Partington crossed paths by chance on a lockdown film and TV sync music zoom course and started working together remotely. Over the next 3 years, through major grief from close family deaths, illness, the crashing lack of usual musical ventures and the whole trauma of the pandemic, McGee and Partington immersed themselves in their new-found collaboration and created the debut, self-titled All the Bees album, which is due for release this winter.

The duo have only met three times in real life – most of that time was spent cooking and eating seriously healthy and beautiful plant-based food. ‘King Crow’ is the next exciting taster of the pair’s journey together as they limber up to launch their debut album.

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Photos by Emma Drabble