Music / Get To Know
Get to Know: Âellin
The name Âellin – a composite encompassing her Welsh and Irish heritage, a Greek harpie and a pet name given by her father – means ‘little whirlwind’, says Siân Magill.
From the sheer volume of words, covering everything from feminism to Proust to granular synthesis, pouring forth from Magill in this short interview, it’s hard to imagine a more apt moniker for this ball of energy and ideas sat across the table.
Today, she says, she’s been researching Gregorian music notation, writing vocal scores, conducting rehearsals with bass and string players, and putting the finishing touches to her day job (with the Open University) before preparing to head off, at 7am the following day, on a European tour with Pem.
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It’s all in a day’s work for the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who has devoted herself to honing her various crafts alongside working full time to save for a house since she was 16.
“Every part of my life has been, what’s the next step to get better and better at things,” she says, describing picking up her brother’s guitar to alleviate the frustration of being a non-player at folk sessions she attended with her dad.
As a teenager she endured the challenging ‘training ground’ of solo sets in pubs “full of middle aged men that expect you to be rubbish”; she learned cello during lockdown, and later a move from Milton Keynes to Bristol inspired a focus on improvisation, then production skills so she could recreate the album sound that was burning bright in her imagination:
“It’s been a really long journey – every day since I’m 15 saying, ‘OK, what’s the next thing?’”
Now, at 32, it’s all paid off, and with striking synchronicity: this summer Magill signed the contract on a house on the same day that she signed her record deal.
She’s moved into her new home, the space she’s dreamed of owning since she read Virginia Woolf as a teenager – “she basically said ‘if you want to do well, have your own money and your own place,’ so I was like ‘better get to it Siân.’ I now have a place to play the cello where no one can tell me to stop!” – and her album, Constellations, will be released by Severn Songs on September 5.
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What is it that’s made her so driven? “Mostly angst,” she laughs. “I’m very feminist at heart. I was so sick and tired of the expectation that as a young girl I was not going to be good at the guitar; the only way to deal with that is to be better than their expectation, so I just kept drilling and pushing.
“Then you realise it’s entrenched in so many things – like, why do I headline International Women’s Day every year because there isn’t anyone else? Why don’t I know any females that produce music?
“When I moved to Bristol it was different – there were female musicians, producers, so then it became ‘how do I partake more?’”
Magill immediately immersed herself in the folk, jazz and hip hop scenes she found in the city: “I now feel deeply embedded in what is the most supportive and collaborative community in Bristol. Being part of it is more than you ever anticipate it’s going to be.”
She also took the time to develop her ideas, locking herself in a cabin in the Peak District for a month to establish her ‘soundworld’ – the comprehensive and distinctive atmosphere produced by her use of instrumentation and production – which is, she says, “organic weirded”.
The natural sound of her folk background is “mashed up and put back together” through specialist pedals she built herself in Norway, with added sub-bass which provides “the Milton Keynes backbone”.
For Constellations, Magill introduced her band members – Henry Edmonds (l) on bass and synth, Chris Langton (r) on drums – to a philosophical concept or writer she wanted to explore; they would discuss the ideas and improvise around them, creating sonic representations of each concept – photo: @albaroofaroo
This sound forms the foundation of Constellations, but there’s much more to the album than that: the overarching concept carries the character Seren – ‘star’ in Welsh – along a path starting at individualism and ending at “yes, finding yourself finally, but within a context of everything”.
Each track is formed around a philosophical concept or piece of writing that Magill found intriguing. “They’re all just little worlds within themselves,” she says of the songs, but the album also reflects her own path of self-discovery.
“I had been in a hole of trying to understand myself for such a long time. I became curious about the idea of personal self-development so present in our Western cultural context – it’s so closeted because we forget to put ourselves back in the context of being surrounded by other people, all the time.
“We get so tunnel visioned about how important our life is, the meaning of our existence, but – you get one, and that’s amazing! And if you can bring any wonder or good things to the world, all the better for it.”
Monarch explores the fragmentation of self into symbols. Madeleines takes inspiration from Proust’s depiction of sense memory, incorporating samples of metronomes and the bells of a French church.
Shadowstep considers Jung’s concept of the shady, buried bits of ourselves that must be confronted – “accepting and dancing with them” – to find personal solace.
It’s pertinent for a musician who’s spent a year overcoming the paralysing grip of performance anxiety – “I was shaking to the point I couldn’t play the guitar, I couldn’t sing properly” – which, in typical style, she tackled with research including a deep dive into climbing psychology.
“I realised I just had my head so far in ‘what if people hate me, what if they don’t think I’m a good female musician?’ I’d like to get back to just being a person on a stage enjoying playing my music.
“It’s a difficult line to walk – we need one foot in each realm: to be cognisant that what we’re doing is important and incremental change over, say, 100 years or whatever is going to make a difference for women in the future. Being even a tiny bit of that incremental change is a really positive thing.
“But it’s about not getting so consumed by it and expecting to be the next Virginia Woolf. Being happy to be part of a wave is important.”
Magill has overcome a long period of stage fright based, partly, on intense pressure she put on herself to represent on behalf of female musicians, and now feels ready to perform live again – photo: Ursula Billington
Now she’s ready to get back on stage and preparing to present a heartfelt body of work: how does she hope people will respond?
“I hadn’t really thought about people listening to it!” she says, as if genuinely considering this for the first time. “If it sparks some kind of curiosity, there is nothing better that could happen.
“As long as you make things you’re proud of, that’s all you can ask for. I want to look back at this album when I’m 80 and think ‘I stand by that – it was the best I could do at the time’.
Âellin will launch Constellations in a double header with Anna Ling at Circomedia on September 5: headfirstbristol.co.uk/whats-on/circomedia/fri-5-sep-cuculi-presents-anna-ling-ellin
Main image: Âellin
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