1. |
Paper
01:00
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Though initially the thing’s capacity to roil and off-gas seemed boundless, it eventually quietened and sat there on the deck like a blank sheet of paper.
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2. |
Through the Walls
04:38
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It came from behind the sun.
It caught us off guard.
Our instruments went haywire.
Our cities went dark.
A signal, a wave, a vast hull, a mistake,
a nonsensical mist.
You sit in your car and await the vanguard
of whatever this is.
The softening firmament seeping in through the vents.
Rushing in waves down the shady lanes.
Pouring through gates at the guarded estates.
Drowning the stalls at the shopping malls.
Through the walls, through the walls.
Pouring down ramps at the corporate campuses.
Cresting the counters at the airport lounges.
Down from the stars.
Through the walls, through the walls.
If it turned you inside out,
you'd be open to love.
If it sucked you into space,
you'd be closer to god.
But you find what you're looking for
in whatever's at hand:
the din of these starlings or
the ankle-deep ash
that pours like a river
from the site of the crash.
Rushing in waves down the shady lanes.
Pouring through gates at the guarded estates.
Drowning the stalls at the shopping malls.
Through the walls, through the walls.
Pouring down ramps at the corporate campuses.
Cresting the counters at the airport lounges.
Down from the stars.
Through the walls, through the walls.
Consider the vast aridity of your interior life.
Consider the remedies: some unpleasant, some extreme.
Consider the way you hold yourself.
"Safe journey, space fans, wherever you are."
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3. |
Boltzmann Brainz
04:03
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I saw this mangled hull drift by and thought of you
watching this mangled hull drift by and thinking of me.
I know you came through here before me,
I know you saw all kinds of junk to remind you that we
believed all the things we believed
without ever believing the things that we didn't believe
but we should've. We should've.
We should've. We should've.
We should've.
Two thousand years between passes of two unknown masses.
One stable cloud of two inert gases.
Two spun-up brains in adjacent jars.
Two assembly line arms reaching for each other in the dark.
I saw these white dwarves colliding and thought of you
watching these white dwarves colliding and thinking of me.
We've circled each other for eons but the end will come
fast when it comes, though it still might not be
the end we expected,
the end that we feel we deserve,
the end that would give things the meanings
they should have, they should have,
they should have, they should have,
they should have.
Two suns sinking past the horizon.
Two unblinking eyes on two distant probes
launched by long-extinct titans.
Two asteroids cutting parallel swaths
through the rings of a planet whose mass
will slingshot them light years apart.
I see you sometimes.
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4. |
Speed
01:00
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At this speed, consciousness smeared along space’s lower layers in a way that required an n+1 view of things, where n equaled however many dimensions your current understanding of physics entailed.
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5. |
Away Mission
01:54
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After the crash you said:
"I can't believe that we died!
I can't believe that we're dead!
And we can have this little
post-ha-ha-mortem!"
The surface of this moon is thick
with the shreds of the lives that we lived,
we could power our distress signal
by burning the skins that we shed.
And when the search party arrives
to find that the embers have died,
will they notice as they mill about
that somehow the smoldering shell smells of
opoponax and jasmine.
The future's a silent heat death.
Or the future might be the Big Rip.
Or the future's the fucking Big Crunch.
The future's our exploding sun.
The future's another ice age.
The future's ten minutes away.
The future's the next breath we take
of air that is heavy with the scent of
opoponax and jasmine.
This can't be a song because I can't sing.
This isn't a metaphor for anything.
It was here when we came,
it'll stay when we leave,
and whatever it is it smells like
opoponax and jasmine.
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6. |
Classic Bad Vibes
04:40
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It's 11:11 we wish you were dead.
You'll wish you were too
when we're through with you.
And no one remembers those heady days
before we knew the end was here to stay.
Let's do it just how we rehearsed:
all negative trends will continue unchecked,
all positive trends will reverse.
Fighters streak by, planets collide, antichrists rise:
classic bad vibes. All these classic bad vibes.
Stiff as a feather, light as a board.
You have your scriptures and I have mine.
They speak of a terrible force,
a big hand pulling down the endless sky.
It always gets what it wants,
and what it wants, what it wants, what it wants
is to do terrible things to you.
Black holes eat light, ICBMs fly, portents and signs:
classic bad vibes! All these classic bad vibes.
"What a frenzied moment that was!
Didn't they maintain an exhausting pace!"
Fighters streak by, planets collide, antichrists rise,
black holes eat light, portents and signs:
classic bad vibes! All these classic bad vibes!
Love those classic bad vibes!
Always classic bad vibes!
Well, it goes like this:
the ninth, the sixth,
the phrygian pall,
and the fatal slip.
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7. |
Consequences
01:06
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She awoke to find herself encased in elastomers produced by some civilization whose mastery of biology outpaced their understanding of physics with dire consequences.
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8. |
Residue
01:10
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In a flash they understood that the presence by which they felt haunted was their future self, which had returned so often to this moment in memory that it left a kind of temporal residue.
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9. |
The Electrician
06:22
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Baby it's slow
When lights go low
There's no help, no
He's drilling through the spiritus sanctus tonight
Through the dark hip falls
Screaming all you mambos kill me
and kill me and kill me
If I jerk the handle
You'll die in your dreams
If I jerk the handle
Jerk the handle
You'll thrill me and thrill me
And thrill me
(Send your mind to the dark sun
that inhales all dark thoughts.
Out in the hall he...nevermind.
I'll leave it in this black box for you.
I hope it won't seem to forward of me.
I just won't need it anymore.)
Baby it's slow
When lights go low
There's no help,
no.
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10. |
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This place is on the wrong side of the hill
and it gets dark so early, if it ever gets light.
The day is mild, and home is in sight,
but I could die of exposure if
I really put my mind to it.
I came here on feet of my own,
unbent by man or spirit,
and when I get back alive
I alone will take the credit.
Just five more minutes and I will turn around.
Just ten more minutes and I will turn around.
But there's no need for me to turn around.
Look, no one needs me to turn around.
Trap doors, trap doors, trap hallways, trap floors.
Trap doors, trap doors, trap valleys, trap tors.
I wandered down this perilous path unaware of the peril.
I wandered down this perilous path unaware of the peril, or the path.
I wandered down this perilous path unaware of myself or the peril or the path.
I'll build a fire in the abandoned hive,
amongst the ghosts of those that came before.
And in the play of my shadow on their lines
my mind will be made like their minds.
And in this way I will see the beauty of their lives,
I will see the night that came to end their work,
and then I'll know what I now just suspect:
that this place we have come to
is the same as what we left.
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11. |
Hull Ablation
04:50
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Bouncing back and forth
between this dead earth and
places no one's bothered to name,
eyes open or closed or gone
or gummed over
with sleep that only left you more awake.
The pinking of some failing hull plate,
the drip that echoes in the darkened cargo bay,
the figure floating in the aft passageway,
the hand it draws across its ruined face.
The wolves have never not been at the door.
The door has never not been thrown wide open.
Six months later, a trillion miles away,
while looking for something else you'll find
a note in the log that simply states
"I have no memory of this."
You'll never see those stars again,
you'll never find out what that screaming was.
An easement between the real and the unreal,
the voice of a long-lost god.
The wolves have never not been at the door.
The door has never not been thrown wide open.
We must leave for those who might find this place
and obelisk thusly inscribed:
"Just do every single last fucking thing differently."
The wolves have never not been at the door.
The door has never not been thrown wide open.
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12. |
Less
01:11
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In the end it turned out not that ghosts were real as much as that everything else was less so.
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Erich Zann / The Shrander Seattle, Washington
"His blue eyes were bulging, glassy, and sightless, and the frantic playing had become a blind, mechanical, unrecognisable orgy that no pen could even suggest." — H.P. Lovecraft, The Music of Erich Zann
Erich Zann / The Shrander recommends:
Parallelograms
by Linda Perhacs
Beautiful and intensely idiosyncratic and essentially unknown for decades.
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Stretcher - USA Stretched Version (MR-060)
by Severed Heads
One of the first bands to baffle me in that special way that makes you want to remain forever confused.
go to album
In 1993 my college roommate wordlessly handed me some cassettes that I still am not entirely sure were real. How could they be?
go to albumIf you like "...nightjars nightjars nightjars nightjars nightjars.", you may also like:
painting whales, part 1
by Sun Kin
LA-via-Bombay artist Sun Kin creates cosmic ambient soundscapes inspired by the majesty of the beaked whale on this latest EP.
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Dream pop jammers that skip from psych to alternative to indie pop and back again.
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The songs on the latest from Absolutely Free feel as expansive as a cloudless sky, with ringing guitars and bright-eyed melodies.
go to album
