Totems by Max Davies

On Totems:

Begin at the beginning...
O the dreams and feelings (that haunt and herald the corners) of our restless, shifting lives; how they often descend without rhyme or reason, making themselves unavoidable, scratching to achieve some sort of form, some crooked perfection in an imperfect world. These are the things that gently push us towards creation, spark the first swirlings, how difficult to trace their path it is. In other words: sometimes the edges of things aren't always salient and the path isn't necessarily always straight.

Formless (and often in dreams or reveries) the inklings that hatched these recordings originally came into being. What initially seemed a definite structure for this album went through many changes. Often arrangements and orders would deconstruct themselves back down to the germ, only to reassemble into a new collection of songs, chants, and dog-ears of experience.

Essentially, these songs are well-travelled. Some began as piano tinkerings in the cloudy, wet, chestnut fall of northern Italy, or as acoustic contemplations of curses left on the side of the darkling road in Los Angeles. Some came from staring into a starry abyss with the best of friends, others from contemplations of energy in the METRO. Still others came over the dream-transistor in fragments and feelings, auguring dimensions of the future (and of nowhere).

Many of these lyrics happened once-upon-a-time, (some have yet to possibly happen). Some grew undoubtedly from nursery rhymes and other voices. Some winded their way back from a sunrise on the Orient Express en route to Paris. Some descended through the years after contemplating the tops of clouds, others cut their teeth in New York, plotting their reformation whilst reflecting on one fashion or another.

This album is a magical act in a universe of possibility. These songs weren't necessarily written with the intention of having a spiritual significance, but, seem to have picked up the habit somewhere from the places they used to hide... Totems was made to be a complete picture, each song being chosen to help complete that picture, create a definite vibe, construct a certain aura.

These songs come into the world hoping they will help people make some sense of an often senseless world, make the whispers not as dark as they once were. Very often songs have a funny way of coming true, (like incantations on the brow)
making sense later on down-the-road. Some of these songs have already started to yield such auguries. Who knows? maybe if you listen carefully (get your ear close enough to the ground) you'll catch a glimpse of yourself , your future or something familiar in the reflection of these songs? Nevertheless they hope to pour some good vibrations into your ears and and help you to enjoy a moment or two outside of all the noise.

If nothing else, hopefully these songs will stand as a reminder that it's always okay to begin at the beginning.

Songwriter, guitarist and producer. Max Davies has been featured in: Artforum; Guitar World & Guitarist magazines; Centre Pompidou, the American College Dance Festival, Naropa University, and on numerous albums and films. He has worked with Thurston Moore, Anne Waldman, Lydia Lunch, CA Conrad, Toni Oswald, Clark Coolidge, Cecilia Vicuna, Eleni Sikelianos Gregory Alan Isakov, and more.

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