Gothic Folk Artist Gemma Ray Announces Four New Zealand Shows For May

Berlin-based artist Gemma Ray has lined up four New Zealand shows for May on the heels of her upcoming Australian tour. The brooding Essex-born musician, who has worked with the likes of Sparks and Alan Vega, is coming downunder in support of her seventh studio album, The Exodus Suite, which was recorded at Berlin's Candy Bomber studios - where 8000 Syrian refugees were housed in the hangar below the studio at the time of recording. On the unexpected arrival of refugees, Ray explained: “I realised that it gave an immediate mirror to some of the lyrics which are, though not political in any direct sense, influenced by these strange and tense times.” The resulting has album being described as "a set of torch songs, but for humanity's sense of well-being rather than a romantic lost love". Here are the tour details ...

Gemma Ray
with special guest Gris-de-Lin

Tuesday 2nd May, Golden Dawn, Auckland
Friday 5th May, The Old Mill, Napier
Saturday 6th May, Caroline, Wellington
Sunday 7th May, Blue Smoke, Christchurch

Tickets to all shows except Napier available HERE at UTR

Here's the video for 'We Do War', plucked from Gemma's latest album The Exodus Suite...

PRESS RELEASE:

The Berlin based, Essex born, Gemma Ray brings her band and reverb drenched atmospheric sound to NZ this May.

Her sound has been described as Gothic-folk,and pop-noir, but tags aside - it's a moody mix of psychedelic blues with a hefty nod to her sizzling cinematic side. She also writes and produces music for film and television and notably worked with famous German director Wim Wenders.

Counting such admirers as Grinderman, whom she opened for on her last jaunt down-under, and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, she has also collaborated with Sparks, the recently departed Alan Vega from New York legends Suicide, and Thomas Wydler, drummer from The Bad Seeds. Jimmy Page saw her open for Mott The Hoople at their three UK shows in 2009 and said she is 'not to be missed'
Gemma Ray’s latest opus The Exodus Suite is a dramatic 52-minute odyssey through her unique style of epic torch song psychedelia. Recorded live in seven days at the infamous Candy Bomber Studios (situated in the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin) by Ingo Krauss, the album’s title reflects the personal-political themes of the songs within. The Exodus Suite was released on 20th May 2016 on Bronzerat Records.

An unexpected yet inescapable influence on The Exodus Suite sessions was the presence of 8,000 Syrian refugees housed in the hangar beneath the studio during the recording. The stark reality of the refugees’ circumstances (whom are still housed there to this day), and the experience of these sights, sounds and smells right within spitting distance, lent a profoundly immediate dimension to Gemma Ray’s lyrical explorations of love for all life, exile and relocation, nature's sovereignty, technology, class and most of all the need for human empathy.