Drew McDowall (DAIS / Coil / Bristol debut!)
A Letter from Beirut (1978 - Jocelyne Saab)
Tina Hitchens & Bint Mbareh (Bristol debut) 
Mayss (Dreaming Live / Kiosk Radio)

Silent Sirens brings a night in solidarity with Lebanon - with a screening of Letter from Beirut, a documentary by celebrated Lebanese director Jocelyne Saab, followed by live performances from Exist Festival family members Drew McDowall (Coil), and Bint Mbareh (Palestine) joined by local flutist Tina Hitchens for a first time collaboration. Mayss (Kiosk/Amman) will be soundtracking the evening with her Dreaming Live Collection.

100% of funds raised on the night go to two grassroots organisations:

- Beit Aam — a community initiative in Beirut getting food and support to families who've been displaced from the South and across Lebanon.
https://field-supporters.net/experiments/beit-aam/

- Syrian Eyes — an NGO working directly with Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, who are denied basic rights on Lebanese soil and left without access to shelter. They also support vulnerable Lebanese families.
https://www.syrianeyes.org/

This night honours collective memory and the shared struggles of those displaced and dispossessed as a result of imperial violence. A space to come together, bear witness, and stand with one another.

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DREW MCDOWALL 

Drew McDowall’s backstory reads like a primer of psychedelic fiction woven into statements of the unbelievable, superhuman, and outright insane. Growing up in the gangs of 1970’s Scotland, McDowall-fatigued by years of daily violence and the chaotic madness of that life- sought self-expression and sanctuary in punk and found a home in Glasgow’s rich underground music community. After a stint with The Poems, a band he started with his then-wife Rose McDowall, he joined the ranks of UK avant-gardists Genesis P-Orridge, David Tibet, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, John Balance, and countless others who would come to define the industrial music’s blossoming experimental vanguard. McDowall eventually collaborated with Psychic TV and became a full-time member of the hugely influential cult outfit Coil, where his influence shaped the group’s later output: exercises in magical practice and music-as-psychoactive effect.

While McDowall has had a strong affinity to electronic music throughout his career, he has avoided making music confined to any one genre and in his most recent works has used string players, brass, pipe organ and harp. This diversity of approach is reflected in his collaborations with Kali Malone, Caterina Barbieri, Robert Aki Aubrey Lowe, Hiro Kone, Varg, Puce Mary, Shapednoise, Rabit, James K, Elvin Brandhi and LEYA amongst others. He has toured a live AV reinterpretation of Coil’s seminal drone work, Time Machines, at festivals across the world including CTM, Berlin Atonal, Dark Mofo, Unsound, Le Guess Who, Semibreve, WOS and Ambient Church.

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A LETTER FROM BEIRUT (1978)

Screening with the kind permission of the Jocelyne Saab Association.

Letter from Beirut documents the filmmaker's return to Beirut during one of the lulls, three years after the outbreak of the civil war, animated by the urge to return. She is confronted by the physical, emotional and psychological ravages of the war, terrified and sorrowful, she cannot find her place in the city. In that quest, she communicates with everyday people, friends, neighbors, people riding the bus across the city's eastern and western flanks. To pace her journeying and dramatic unraveling of the film, Saab borrows the guise of a letter read in a voice-over, written by world-renowned poet Etel Adnan. A rare document from the civil war, Letter from Beirut lays bare and spontaneously how people make sense of their everyday in the midst of chaos, violence, terror and sorrow.

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TINA HITCHENS & BINT MBAREH

https://bintmbareh.today/

Bint Mbareh challenges Settler colonial epistemology by taking seriously Palestinian ways of knowing, from rain-summoning music to shrine pilgrimage as an instigator to political revolution. She has shown some of this work with TBA21, at the Tate Modern, at Cafe OTO, Unsound Festival, in collaboration with Forensic Architecture, at Next Festival in Bratislava and Insomnia Festival in Tromso, as part of Another Sky festival, Bint has founded event series such as Against the Clock, which runs regularly at Vesper's Club in Peckham. She has also shared lineups with Clairo, Mustapha the Poet, Mos Def, Nicolas Jaar, Alabaster Deplume, The Vernon Spring, Danalogue and is a member of the band Ottomani Parker. She also established the Choir for Non-musicians, which is a workshop bridging the gap between performance and spectatorship. Her work has been covered by Art in America, Art Forum, Rolling Stone India, E-flux, Teen Vogue UK, and others.

Tina is a improviser, flautist and composer / sound artist who works largely in the fields of free improvisation, sound art, and contemporary classical music, playing and writing in a variety of musical groups as well as working with artists from other disciplines.

Recent projects include as a recipient of an ‘Interpreting Isolation’ grant from the British Music Collection and Sound & Music. Tina collaborated with artist Sam Francis to produce a new work, High Tide. In 2019/20 Tina was a commissioned artist for CANOPY, an arts network in the Forest of Dean, creating a sound art piece focusing on a Phone Box using sounds and stories from the Forest area. Tina was composer for Freya Gabie’s Grafted Chorus – a project for the ‘Future Perfect‘ public arts programme; a Halftone collaboration with artist Benjamin A Owen at Supernormal Festival; and Amalgams, produced by the ONOMATO collective. Tina has also been a composer / improviser for artist Benjamin A Owen’s Goldfinch film events, collaborated with Field Sports / Fold Music, was a flautist for Song 5 of Welsh National Opera’s Occupation – Five songs that shook the world, and performed orchestral piccolo for the world premiere of Andrew Wilson-Dickson’s Karuna – an oratorio for compassion.

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MAYSS

https://dreaming.live/

Mayss is a Jordanian DJ, producer, curator, writer, and web developer. She is the founder of Dreaming Live, a podcast platform for uncompromised creative expression that has featured conversations with guests such as David Lynch, Martin Rev, and Lydia Lunch. Dreaming Live also operates as a record label, created to rally artists in support of Gaza; from treating injured children to supporting farmers. Its compilations feature Mayss’ own work alongside tracks by Suzanne Ciani, Martin Rev, Nicolas Jaar, and others.

Behind the decks and in the radio booth, her sound is impossible to confine – as broad-ranging as, in her own words, 'my love for the infinite interdimensional universe of music'. Her sets often thread together experimental textures, drawing on bands like Coil, group A, and Minimal Violence, while paying homage to the labels, scenes, and sonic traditions that continue to inspire her.