experimental musician
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Mira Martin-Gray is an experimental musician from Toronto known for her work with electronics. Her investigations in this area began as a way to continue making music after chronic illness and injury scuttled her guitar and percussion chops. As an established player in Toronto's thriving improvised music community, her facility with the no-input mixing board makes her an in-demand collaborator and soloist in various experimental settings, from free jazz to ambient drone.
Marked by eclecticism and a persistent DIY spirit, her practice ranges from improvisation to idiosyncratic songcraft, off-kilter electronic dance music and electroacoustic composition, all connected by an attention to intuition and the body. If her music is informed by gender, sexuality and disability, these themes are not framed not as plot devices but details. After years of self-released indie, noise music, and various improv scenarios, her recent solo output is interested in building narratives from abstract materials. 2019's "Kissing Infinity" leverages a gentle queer domesticity against the forces of reaction, while "out of body out of work: solos for mixing boards" coaxes abstract electrical riffs from dusty pawnshop equipment in an effort to counter what is considered desirable and productive. Also from 2019, "I Have Eaten From The Timbrel I Have Drunk From The Cymbal" is a set of polymetric dance tracks made using a single monophonic synthesizer, where the limitations of the tool at hand offer possibilities rather than barriers. 2020's "Stick Control for the Air Drummer" and 2021's "Home Stereo Test" shape shrewd premises into a longform mediation on the problem of skill, and a self-reflexive sound art parody, respectively. With the release of Hen's Teeth in 2023, Martin-Gray's singing, songwriting, and musicianship receive equal billing with her more left-field impulses. The new full-length divides its time between graceful ballads and anarchic improv. While billed as a solo effort, Mira's friends and collaborators from the jazz and improvised music scene contribute vitally to the album's assorted forms and moods. She has performed at major Canadian experimental music festivals such as Guelph Jazz Festival, Winnipeg's Send+Receive, and Toronto's Long Winter, Women from Space and Tone Festival. Her music has been reviewed in reviewed in The Wire, Musicworks, Bandcamp daily, The Quietus, Exclaim!, Whole Note, Toneshift, ATTN magazine, and other outlets. Recordings have appeared on many independent canadian and international labels. |