Label: Shame File Music

コレは激ヤバです。アメリカにて1920年代から30年代にかけて活躍した映画女優にして、新聞王ウィリアム・ランドルフ・ハーストの愛人として知られるマリオン・デイヴィス。真実を隠し続けた女優であり、そして殆ど露わになっていない彼女のプラベートですが、オーストラリアのノンフィクション作家Jessica L. Wilkinsonが2012年にバイオグラフィーを出版。本作はJessica L. Wilkinson自身がそのオリジナルテキストを読み上げ、様々なコラージュや音響と共に再構築したマリオン・デイヴィスのイメージサウンド。簡単なボイス・カットアップ、ピアノの点描打鍵、浮遊するハルモニウム & バイオリン、シンプルが故の不穏さと異質な世界観が絶妙にマッチした音作品としての完成度が凄すぎの一枚。マスタリングやスリーヴデザインにKyeでのリリースで知られるJoe TaliaやMatthew Revertが関与した強力布陣。大推薦。



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.”