Gemma Ray & Thomas Truax
Gemma Ray
Entry Requirements: All Ages
A double-headline show with two of the most imaginative singer-songwriters around!
GEMMA RAY
British pop music has plenty of retro-soul and R&B acts, but the recordings of singer-songwriter Gemma Ray reveal a more complex and restless artistic nature than most. Reaching back to pre-Beatles rock for inspiration -- but tossing in a jumble of influences including the torch songs of Billie Holiday, film scores, flamenco, and more -- Ray has sculpted a sound that is familiar and warm, but also appealingly off-kilter and full of noir-ish touches.
This tour celebrates the release of a brand new album: 'PSYCHOGEOLOGY' represents Ray’s most ambitious release to date, its intricate arrangements and textures – including choral and string arrangements – the result of almost a year’s labour determinedly hewn from rare periods of time available between tours. The album, she says, is “an ode to the majesty of landscape, the enormity of nature and time, and the inevitability of every human life eventually forming a minuscule part of further landscapes.”
"Absolutely staggering" - Guy Garvey
"Not to be missed" - Jimmy Page
"Ray vamps beautifully through shivery glades of country blues, girl-group drama and Link Wray throb" - MOJO
THOMAS TRUAX
One of the most imaginative characters on the pop music fringe, since the year 2000 Thomas Truax has been traveling the world performing with his evolving “band” of bizarre self-made Harry Partch-esque instruments including a motorized drum machine made of bike wheels called ‘Mother Superior’ and a pimped-up Dr. Seuss-ian Gramophone called ‘The Hornicator’, as well as his venerable resonator guitar ‘Hank’. Time Out magazine has dubbed him “The king of home-made instruments” while Splendid magazine called him “one of the five or ten best singer/songwriters in the world that you’ve never heard of".
Truax crafts rich, poetically evocative songs about insects, trees, technology, and a lifelong obsession with things lunar, including various reasons ‘Why Dogs Howl at The Moon’. Notable supporters and collaborators include Jarvis Cocker, Duke Special, Brian Viglione (of the Dresden Dolls/Violent Femmes) and the late author Terry Pratchett. Truax has released an original score for a major German stage production of 'Peer Gynt' (by award-winning director Kay Voges) and - inspired by a meeting with David Lynch - a highly-rated covers album ‘Songs From The Films Of David Lynch’.
"Inventive and Romantic" - TimeOut
"Genius" - NME
"Thomas Truax is not of this earth...I still can't think of a single show I've seen that was as beguiling or as charming or as plain bananas as this one" - Gigwise