ISRAELI SINGER BARES ALL (WELL, SOME) FOR PALESTINE

Israeli-born unhinged folk singer-songwriter Avital Raz is making a unique contribution to peace in the Middle East. Her new single, just released on Sotones Records, is a brave and raw account of sex across political and ethnic boundary lines. The Edinburgh Surprise tells of an unexpected encounter in that city between an Israeli woman and a man who turns out to be Palestinian. In keeping with the theme of make love not war, the download code for the single is attached to a condom, which is given in return for a donation to Stop the Wall, a Palestinian grassroots campaign. The Edinburgh Surprise is the first single release from the forthcoming album The Believer, also on Sotones, produced by Pete Harvey (Meursault, The Leg) who plays cello and piano throughout. "Where to place her? She draws on a Bjork-like eccentricity, veers through all kinds of Eastern and Western passages, and emerges as a female singer-songwriter who puts many of her contemporaries to shame. To call her magical is to miss the point. This is real and very potent self-expression." [Nick Burbridge, R2 magazine] To coincide with the release, Raz is releasing a revealing video of the song (made by Chris Davis). The video combines CCTV-style footage of drunk people in Edinburgh with newsreel scenes of missiles exploding in Israel and Palestine. Images of Middle Eastern politicians and victims of war are projected onto naked bodies. The video begins and ends with an image of a wall of dates being built and then dismantled, against a background of olive trees in a typical Middle Eastern landscape, finally revealing a cheeky slogan in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Raz said: Israeli women who dare to speak out against the occupation are often reviled as whores of the Arabs. In this song I wanted to explore what happens when the more vulnerable gender belongs to the occupying nation. I also hope through this release to raise money for Stop the Wall.

Contacts: PR@Sotones.co.uk (Pete Columba, press agent) Avital Raz on 07415 343285 or avitalraz@gmail.com Web links: Music video of The Edinburgh Surprise http://youtu.be/k3P6UCqSMO0 Artists website www.avitalraz.com Label website http://sotones.co.uk Stop the Wall! www.stopthewall.org The Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign is a coalition of Palestinian non governmental organizations and popular committees that mobilize and coordinate efforts on local, national and international levels. Avital Raz trained as a classical singer in her native Jerusalem, but gave up a promising career to move to India, where she studied traditional Dhrupad music for six years. She is now a singer-songwriter with a series of records to her credit (the latest of which, Infidelity, was released earlier this year). Having lived for periods in Berlin and California, she is now based in Preston. In December 2012 Avital Raz attracted UK press attention (and some Israeli scorn) when she played a benefit concert for Gazas children in Derby, on the heels of the latest attack by the Israeli army.