Nils Frykdahl – vocals, guitar, flute
Dan Rathbun – bass, various homemade instruments
Michael Mellender – guitar, trumpet, percussion, percussion-guitar
David Shamrock – drums, glockenspiel
Drew Wheeler – guitar, glockenspiel, Theremin |
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Label: Web of Mimicry Records
Recorded between Fall 2014–Fall 2016 by Dan Rathbun at Polymorph in Berkeley with assistance from Mark (the) StiKman, and at Brockhurst in Oakland, and at Polynorth on the Lost Coast mixed by Dan @ Polymorph & Polynorth. Mixed by Dan @ Polymorph & Polynorth. Produced by Free Salamander Exhibit.
Art by Per Frykdahl. Design by Jenya Chernoff and Nils Frykdahl. Photo by Lara Miranda.
Copyright 2016 Web of Mimicry Records. All rights reserved. |
Unwriting the master’s voice
Unwriting the name of god, gl
Unwriting the flame of Geist
Unwriting the gl the gl the glas
Catachresis Catafalque Cataglot
Always already we have started
Always already we’re there
Always already we are cinders
Always already we’re gone
Teach a god to speak
Let it be in Hebrew or Greek
Im Anfang var die Logos
Give holocaust to the sun
From flower to fruit to wine
to blood to the fire
The all-burning, all-giving
always already retreating formless
unvorstellbarer god of the desert
god of the East, rising
to learn to fall
to learn to die in the
arms of the West
The ashes remain
2. The Keep
We’re safe from fire
Fire keeps us safe
Stay in the light
Don’t go outside
Fearful blight but you wanted it to
Wrecking light but you
asked for it before
Silence in the perfect stain
The blight is real
And the sun will eat itself
over the hollow eyes
Close the door
We don’t know what’s outside
In the Keep
We’re nothing if not alive
Soon is the night and laughing
backwards (throw it away)
Burning alive just duck and cover
You never know until it’s over
Say never want say never had
to (closing the shell)
Burning alive just duck and cover
You never know until it’s over
Suffocation – it is mine
Close the door, kill the light
Bury me, in the Keep
Under the spreading tree
Rank enclosure, suffocating
We’re living unalive
Lock all the doors, bury the cage
3. The Gift
Utopian cyber-hippie this
is your world now
I guess you think it’s cool;
I guess you like it
Utopian cyber-zombie
shut the faaauuu
I guess it’s free for everybody
I guess you made a little money
A nation of what should
be human beings
Walking around like victims
in bad science-fiction
The borg is here now
The body-snatchers have come
And taken over what used
to be a cafe, a bus
a train, a classroom. The bodysnatchers
have come
Utopian cyber-hippie this
is your world now
Utopian cyber-zombie this
is your day in the sun
Utopian cyber-hippie shut
the door on the way out
Utopian cyber-zombie get that
thing out of my face and run
You’ve given the children a
gift that keeps on giving
They will never have known
the world without this gift
So here let us recall the malice
of old gods….spite!
You’ve opened the door
to another world
That’s been with us all along…
watching, waiting
Open the box Steal the fire
Taste it! Burn it! Break it!
O Pan! O Pandora! O Eve!
Prometheus Loki
Luce Fero Lucifero I bring
the light I bring the light
Placeless light Faceless Eye
Cannot live Never die
Let the earth swallow you whole
This gift is not mine
Google Twitter Podcast
I hate the poetry
Download Myspace Facebook
I hate the language
I can’t believe I put this
garbage in a song
Just because it’s 2016 we don’t
all have to sing along
You can get laid on your
virtual planet
I’ll get mine where I don’t have
to plan it with the dead box
A dead box that blinks and
talks and fakes the rock
and might give you brain cancer
Ad for Dragon speech-recognition
software:
“Give the gift that gets
people talking”
People talking to a dragon
Leave the gift at the door
Shut it down Turn it off
Drop out
Get out get out get out get
out get out get out
Into the night Into the dark
Into black silence
Into the night Into the park
Into the forest
Past the gate Past the fountain
Into the cemetery
Under the light of the moon
we can dream of a world
before and after science
Under the light of the sun
we can live in a world
before and after dreams
4. Time Master
Before time was commodified
We traveled to the homes of
those who had the money
to trade for our labor.
I like to feed my family.
I like to work at the
factory when I can.
On days when they don’t need me,
I go to a place and I sell
my time to a man.
I go to the Time Master.
I step through a door and the
work day disappears.
My life is going faster.
I don’t know where it went,
but I payed the rent.
Time Master Time Master,
Selling my life away.
Live faster live faster, but I didn’t
live today.
I went to the Time taker.
He took my time then he
told me to take a nap.
I went to the Slime Raker.
When I come out I always
feel like crap.
I went to the Time Crafter.
And bought the time to enjoy
the finer things in life.
I don’t know what I’m after.
I only know I’m gonna
get all I can.
Time maker Time taker,
Give it I want it back.
Time trader Life raider,
Color another day black.
Time seller Time seller, Who
the fuck sprained my back?
Time giver my sliver,
Cut me a little slack.
My friend the Time Master
he said to me:
“Before I buy your time sign
on the dotted line.
It says that any physical
or mental injury
incurred by any purchasers
of your time
shall reside in perpetuity
within the body of the
purchasee…..
yes that would be you….
Sorry sucker.”
Time maker Time taker,
You give it and take away.
Time giver Dry river,
If somebody’s ready to pay.
Long laster Green pasture,
I’m trying to stay on top.
Last gasper Gas masker,
When is it going to stop?
Time master Time master,
Selling my life away.
Live faster Live faster,
but I didn’t live today.
5. Undestroyed
Slur the buds Slur the buds
Here, locked in my own shadow
for almost forty years
I have reached my hand through
stone and steel and razor wire
And touched the heart
of the world
Here in the shadowed night
Walls, bars, gratings
dissolve into light
And I unloose my soul
And fly through the inner
darkness of my being
I become transparent,
a bright shadow
A bird of dreams
singing from the tree of life
I am undestroyed
My life is my sundance
A man who has hung
from the tree of life
Has a special compact with pain
He’ll be hard to break
Sundance takes place inside
not outside of me
Hard to break
To give your flesh
is to give your life
And what you have given
you can no longer lose
Pain explodes into
bright white light
Into revelation, wordless vision
Of what it is to be in touch with
all beings and all being
Every time a pin pricks your
finger from then on
The small pain will be a reminder
of that larger pain
And a still greater realm
beyond reach of all pain
I am undestroyed
My life is my sundance
Slur the buds Slur the buds
And if the stars have a meaning
Then my life has a meaning
7. Oxen of the Sun
The voices blend and fuse
in clouded silence
Grey twilight ever descends,
never falls
Shedding her dusk
Scattering stars
She follows her mother
with ungainly steps
Meek apprehensive skull
They fade, sad fantoms all
All is gone
Agendath is a wasteland
A home of screech owls
and the sandblind
Netaim the golden is no more
On the highway of the clouds
they come
Muttering thunder of rebellion
The ghosts of beasts
Huuh! Hark (Hawk)! Huuh!
Parallax stalks behind
and goads them
The lancinating lightnings of
whose brow are scorpions
Elk and yak, the bulls of
Bashon and Babylon,
Mammoth and mastodon,
they come
trooping to the sunken sea
Lacus Mortis
Ominous, revengeful, zodiacal host
Onward to the dead sea
they tramp to drink,
Unslaked and with
horrible gulpings,
The salt somnolent
inexhaustible flood.
They moan, passing
upon the clouds
Horned and capricorned
The trumpeted with the tusked
The lion-maned and giant-antlered
Snouter and crawler
Rodent, ruminant, pachyderm
All their
moving moaning multitude
Murderers of the sun
The equine portent grows again
Magnified in the deserted heavens