MYRA DAVIES

„SIRENS“ - the new album from Canadian Spoken Word poet MYRA DAVIES 
with music by Berliners BEATE BARTEL and GUDRUN GUT. 

Myra Davies is back with a new packet of witty stories and poetic reportage in a dynamic current of electronica by Berliners, Gudrun Gut and Beate Bartel. Movement is a major theme. Davies’ eye, insightful yet detached, wanders assertively over land to sea to outer space, through time; past to present to future. Her observations and reflections on art, culture, convention, capitalism, express instability, the contingent even conjectural nature of existence. Yet they suggest (without promising) the possibility of optimistic resolution. For Davies, the personal is political and Art is more so.

The album includes a three-track riposte to Götterdammerung, the final opera in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Two tracks tell the story. The third (DO YA) links the epic to us. Wagner was called ‘the great seducer’ because he aimed to ‘take’ his audience in an emotional gut grab that’s been described as ‘artistic rape’. No invitation here to sink hypnotically into the dark ambient tones Gut and Bartel provide for Davies, who in telling the story frequently pops out of it to comment. Indeed, the point of revisiting this End Time for Übermenschen is to draw attention to the eagerness with which we give ourselves to art, politics, love, war, consumption, work, religion, pop culture, technology, vanity, and thus to bondage. Fortunately,the message is delivered in a tempestuous roil of words and music, i.e. — seductively.

MYRA DAVIES: A personal Note 

The word ‘siren’ contains both allure and danger warning. Come hither. Stay away. Such isometric emotional dualities can drive a person around a post like a work donkey. I question such ’native’ impulses and the Romantic notion that emotion is the seat of authenticity, our true core. Our minds - amygdala included - are colonised. Yet the human brain is flexible. It’s possible to take territory, to write our own code. ‘Your mission, if you choose to accept it’. 
Thanks for listening. md

MYRA DAVIES BIO

Myra Davies tells stories in words and music, film and video, performance and print. Davies has built a reputation in the European independent music scene, primarily through her collaborations with Gudrun Gut and other Berlin Electronica Artists. But Davies did not emerge from the ‘Musicscene’. Her original artistic mileau was academy. In Eighties Vancouver, she happened to work with Skinny Puppy who introduced her to Neubauten and it was a short skip from there to Gudrun Gut. Between 1991 and 2004) Davies and Gut released 3 Cds on Berlin label Moabit Musik and toured with MIASMA. Since then, Davies has had two more releases on Moabit under her own name: The Girl Suite (ep) 2008 and Cities and Girls (cd), music and production by Gut with guest composer tracks by Beate Bartel and Alexander Hacke with Danielle de Picciotto.   Cities and Girls (cd) was nominated for best album, Qwarz Electronic Music Awards (Paris) 2010. As well, Davies has written and performed in several comic theatrical performance pieces dissecting Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. The first was performed at The Banff Centre in the early 2000s, then Paddy’s Playhouse, Toronto (2006) The Music Gallery, Toronto (2010) and most recent, a two-hander with Vancouver actor Christine Willes, at The Rachel Brown Theatre, Winnipeg (2014). A Spoken Word Musical for a cast of 24 called ‘Cites & Girls, a Spoken Word New Performance Musicial’ written by Davies and co-developed and directed by Christine Willis, was mounted in Victoria BC in 2015 by The Canadian College of Performing Arts. Gut produced music for many of Davies’ theatre projects. In 2007, Davies and Vancouver film maker, David Hauka made a short, “Alberta Ride of the Valkyrie“ (Bravo!Video Fact). Hauka also created live stage video mixes for Davies’ theatre works in 2014 and 2015. Davies' new spoken word album "Sirens", with music by Gudrun Gut and Beate Bartel, is releaseed in early 2017.

 
PRESS: 
The Guardian
Myra Davies: Sirens review – witty spoken-word skewering of violence, patriarchy and modern music 
5 / 5 stars 
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/21/myra-davies-sirens-review-spoken-word

Essmaa review:
https://essmaa.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/6968/

 
MYRA DAVIES "SIRENS" (Moabit21)
CD w. Booklet, DG

BEATE BARTEL / GUDRUN GUT "INSTRUMENTALS FOR SIRENS" (Moabit20)
LP, a limited edition vinyl release of instrumental mixes. DG

RELEASES: 
 
MYRA DAVIES "THE GIRL SUITE EP" 
available as digital in your fav shop  


MYRA DAVIES "CITIES + GIRLS" 
available as CD with booklet as well as digital in your fav shop  

more info and mailorder here: anost.net

for Davies/Gut: Miasma 1-3 go here DAVIES/GUT