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Martha Skye Murphy

[ she/her ]

city: London
country: UK
genre: Alternative
styles: Singer-Songwriter, Experimental, Drone, Ambient

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on hashbrandnew.com since June 02, 2021

credits: Ben Murphy

Single

label
AD 93

Dogs

out on June 07, 2023

Single

This track is included in our Spotify playlist

New Alternative Vibes

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Reviews and Comments

"Murphy wails, her voice raw, shrieking like a slasher-flick victim. It’s the album’s most exhilarating stretch of sound." - Pitchfork

"Her avant-pop contains so much graceful drama” – The Observer

“An artist in total control of a craft that she’s spent a lifetime honing” - NME

“Murphy is able to tap into the power of the human imagination – the inexpressible universes that form in a person’s head” - The Quietus

Singular creative force Martha Skye Murphy shares her new single ‘Dogs’, self-produced with mixing and engineering by Max Goulding (Black Midi), ‘Dogs’ will be released by cult label AD 93 who will be pressing 20 limited edition vinyl to accompany the release.

‘Dogs’ is her first release since the stunning critically acclaimed 2021 Triptych ‘Concrete’, and the premiere of her experimental opera ‘Postcards Home’, 2022 at the Southbank Centre. ‘Dogs’ is transcendent in its composition; a lone piano radiating like a lighthouse through a smoky sea of ambience, dirt and rare archival opera recordings. Murphy’s otherworldly vocal glides above the track, swooning from tranquil ASMR calm to glassy unease and operatic climax. Gently processed and manipulated, her voice wanders into the uncanny valley of the almost-human. Like a scene from Twin Peaks, a moment of repose subtly builds to swelling tension at the playing of an unexpected piano chord or a startling lyric. The song gestures to environmental disaster in conjunction with human failure, loneliness and intimacy. For just under 7 minutes, ‘Dogs’ takes the listener on an exploration through subtle yet masterful electronic processing, unique found-sound sampling and a truly inimitable vocal performance.

‘Dogs’ is partnered with 3 music videos by Billy Howard Price, to imitate Cerberus, the three-headed dog. The leading film sees Murphy bathed in supernatural light, convulsed by digital manipulation in an unidentifiable natural and dramatic location. The 2 other videos can be uncovered exclusively on Murphy’s website, creating a network of videos that form alternate narratives and realities in the song.

Murphy is an entirely unique artist, with a spirit of collaboration constantly redefining her work. Her caterwauling guest vocals were a lightning bolt to Squid’s ‘Bright Green Field’, while on her own track ‘Concrete’ in 2021, she employed experimental NYC duo LEYA to mesmeric effect, who in turn she worked with on their mixtape Eyeline, alongside Okay Kaya, Eartheater and Claire Rousay. She is featured on the next EP from the iconic New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery, to be released later in the year. Always keen on exploring new directions, Martha says: “Working with other people helps me to constantly shift the genres I’m perceived to be associated with and in”.

Previous to this new single, Martha has also toured the UK with a one-woman show as part of the theatre company I Swear I Saw This (which she co-founded), delivered an ambient score for Ivan Krzeszowiec’s multidisciplinary film ‘The Late Departure’ and coded a website for its trailer. Raised in a creative household, as a child she contributed vocals to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ score for 2005’s ‘The Proposition’. She would work with Cave again almost a decade later, as featured singer on The Bad Seeds’ ‘Push The Sky Away’.

My dogs wouldn’t recognise you;

Not that they’d bite, that’s for me to do.

Funny with so many neighbours,

How lonely you can be,

Can pick up the scent, the memory, of that feeling.

The water is rising, fires are burning, forests are dying, coral is bleaching, the living are winking,

And my dogs wouldn’t recognise you.

Dogs by Martha Skye Murphy