Marionette: a Biography of Miss Marion Davies, by Jessica L. Wilkinson & Simon Charles

Marionette: a Biography of Miss Marion Davies

by Jessica L. Wilkinson & Simon Charles

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Comes in a 6-panel Digipack Compact Disc, with artwork by Matthew Revert. Includes 2-page insert featuring an except of Jessica Wilkinson's text.

Includes unlimited streaming of Marionette: a Biography of Miss Marion Davies via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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	1.	Part 1, Opening Night 09:09
	2.	Part 2, If One Could Re-Imagine Two 08:32
	3.	Part 3, Between the Silver Sheets 19:16
	4.	Part 4, Crack! 09:17
	5.	Part 6, I Had Lost My Sense Of Danger 04:59
	6.	Part 7, Life Was Never a Four Letter Word 05:32
	7.	Part 8, And Make Concrete While The Sun Shines 07:19
	8.	Part 9, Foot 02:22

about

Marion Davies is perhaps best known for her 30-year affair with
media mogul William Randolph Hearst, whose influence was
instrumental in shaping her public image as an early cinema
actress. The millionaire tycoon largely controlled her career
and—as much as he could—her actions in public. Whilst there
are countless biographies on William Randolph Hearst, there
are very few texts written specifically on Marion Davies. The
closest we can get to her story is an autobiography, The Times
We Had: Life with William Randolph Hearst, cobbled together
from a series of taped interviews, in which Marion often
conceals the truth to protect her lover and friends.

Jessica L. Wilkinson’s original text marionette: a biography of miss marion davies (published by Vagabond in 2012) draws attention to the gaps and inconsistencies in her story, whilst also attempting—playfully—to locate the voice and spirit of a woman whose story can never be fully told.

This album release documents the creative partnership between Simon Charles and Jessica Wilkinson, which brings Wilkinson’s text into a CD format. Read by Wilkinson herself, the text is accompanied by a collage of instrumental and electro-acoustic performances. The album
explores the fragmentation and disintegration of text, manipulation of vocal utterance, and a construction of Davies’ image through peripheral threads of narrative and sound.

“marionette, a masterwork of unrivalled technique, intensive labor and creative novelty, is one of the most unruly and truth-making long poems in the recent history of Australian poetry.”

—Cordite Poetry Review on Wilkinson’s text

credits

released February 24, 2020

Jessica L. Wilkinson (text and spoken word)
Simon Charles (composition and editing)
Jenny Barnes (voice)
Andrew Butler (piano/harmonium)
Phoebe Green (viola/ viola d’amore)
Michael McNab (percussion)
Recorded by Myles Mumford
Mastered by Joe Talia
Design and Layout by Matthew Revert
Published by sibercha records
SBC 001

This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

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about

Simon Charles

Simon Charles is a composer and performer based in Noongar Ballardong Country (Western
Australia). His practice reflects an interest in the instability of compositional structures; as friction
between musical notation and perception and interactions with place. ... more

sibercha.com

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