1. |
The Tyrant
03:28
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I present to you the double bind
that this system was designed
you must believe you
you must believe you push down
on the backs of others
so you might climb
so you might climb.
Why? Why Am I?
Why am I so tense when
I'm in public spaces?
Separate and enraged
separate and enraged
people trapped in cages.
Trapped between thought crime and thought heroism
the grand standing semi-empathetic codependent
sheltered in the boundaries that set us apart...
I present to you the double bind
that the system was designed
you must believe you
(you are assimilated).
...We who have no past to speak of
my people once fostered a culture of no culture
a power that undermines the will and resources
erases commodifies other folk's agency.
You must believe that you push down
on the backs of others
so you might climb
(making profit off their agony)
so you might climb.
Why? Why am I?
So oh tense when
I'm in public spaces?
Separate and enraged
separate and enraged
People trapped in cages.
You shouldn't have
to hide the way you are
You shouldn't have to
hide the way you are to live.
This endless chorus of
do better you better (forgive yourself,
because no one else will our should)
do better (you just have to do better) you better!
When the novelty of disarming your own mind bomb wears off
turn that defused mind to working on that malignant whole
the Carceral Archipelago
and rip out the fangs of old Iago.
Why? Why am I?
Why am I so oh angry (sheltered in)
gerrymandered boundaries (that raised us)
separate and enraged
separate and enraged (strangers until)
no one's left in cages.
You shouldn't have to hide the way you are.
(This vast complex of use, taught us to abuse)
You shouldn't have to hide the way your are to live,
(just help others live and let live, unlearn and forgive)
Forgive.
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2. |
The Tourist
04:21
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A Disclaimer:
Well everything is going quite swimmingly
I put a little money together
Let the crazy out a little
A little neon, a little helium
Thursday maybe Friday night
Let the crazy out a little at a time
It's Saturday hands up hands up
Walking through
Walking through the picket line
Hey
Hey you
Say hey who do you do?
Walk through my life...
Hands up Hands up
Haha!
I never said
Let the crazy out a little at a time (wrong side of town)
Scrape up the spare change and scream
Gimme Gimme
More weight more stone
Gimme Gimme
Move on alone from just where we were born
(Wrong side of town)
Spent Saturday night
Tearing up my golden ticket
Woke up Sunday morn
Gargling with Glen Livet...
Way hey.... and up he rises....
Hey
Hey you
Say hey who do you do?
Walk through my life...
You know its fun
I got this
leisure time
to be someone else
on someone else dime...
Way hey.... and up he rises....
You know its fun
I got this leisure time...
Ping! OOOOp!
What do you do with a drunken tourist
Early in the morning?
(I say this is all quite extraordinary
And quite uncalled for.)
What do you do with a drunken tourist
(What did I do?)
Early in the morning?
Put em in a bed and leave em in stitches...
It's quite extraordinary!
Hey buddy
whatcha doing all alone here in this lonely stall?
It's quite extraordinary!
Quack?
Way hey.... and up he rises....
Hey
Hey you
Say hey who do you do?
Way hey.... and up he rises....
Don't you
Walk through
my life.
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3. |
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This is a test.
This is only a test.
F/U
I watch the Saguaros die
I watch the sea of trash catch fire
We turn our heads into some new found consumer high
F/U
While we expire.
I watch my brothers and sisters
In their dance of death in their chains
For some insane master that cares nothing for their pain
For their pain
How do we escape this endless F/U?
Why do you
Think we cannot be?
Why do you insist
That we cannot be
Brothers and Sisters?
Alive in each and every I
Born to look out for each other.
Born to look out for each other.
This is a test
This is only a test.
Why do you
Think we cannot be?
Why do you think
we cannot be
Brothers and Sisters?
Why?
How do we escape this?
Why do you think
we cannot be
Brothers and Sisters?
Alive in each and every Eye
Born to look out for each other.
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4. |
It Takes All Of Us
02:46
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Lyrics:
It Takes All Of Us
It is us
It takes all of us
Am I Asleep
At work again?
An Individual for sale
Nietzsche strokes the long nose of the horse
We lean into the quick wonder
Of her breathing
Unbit unbridled unlashed unbearable
Am I asleep at work again?
It takes all of us
An individual for sale.
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5. |
On The Other Side
05:15
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On The Other Side
When I was just 12 years old
My brother left home
And I cried for 3 days
To fill that bottle of paint thinner
I held to my lips
And I fell into a cavern of sound
On the Other Side
You will never know
Until you travel their
Other Side of the road
I fell upward into a cavern of sound
Where the teachers could not reach me
Or the haymakers hit my face
That made me feel nothing
So I translated myself
Into the signal in the speakers
As a wove I rode myself
On the Other Side
You will never know
Until you travel their
Other Side of the road
My mind riot in the shattered glass mouth of the dawn
In Downtown LA with spray paint rhetoric displayed
On every wall a voice snarls
I belong I exist this is mine
I cried for 33 years
Because I understood no-one was coming home
But I can still wait for them
To return
Like this song a missing person
Like this song a missing person
On the Other Side
You will never know
Until you travel there
On the Other Side
You will never know
Until you travel their
Side of the road.
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6. |
The Garden Unbound
02:26
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The Garden Unbound
Are you alive?
Should I join the ranks of grasping men
Or raise the stakes of their nepotism?
Can I find a social ill to condemn
Or praise an unseen God for the work of friends?
No, I will build a palace of sound
A place to laugh and watch your passion play.
Now I build a a garden unbound
A place to crash until the end of days.
We cry resist inside the establishment
And try to raise the peace that Jesus send.
Slam a fist into the sky ascend
Pretend that there aren't people we make die for him.
No, I will build a palace of sound
A place to laugh and watch your passion play.
Now I build a garden unbound
A place to crash until the end of days.
So guiltless, we throw the first stone again,
To raise the stakes of our nepotism.
On crossbeams we hang ourselves and kin
To praise an unseen God for the work of men.
No, I will build a palace of sound
A place to laugh and watch your passion play.
Now I build a garden unbound
A place to crash until the end of my days.
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7. |
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Only Those Who Would Bare A Gentle Soul
(Up up, rise on up)
Only those who would bare
A gentle soul
Are welcome to my
Sound home.
When you ask of me
What’s with my sick need for control?
Wasn’t it you who locked me
Out of my own life at 12 years old?
When I showed you the wound
You scold with cold sworn oath
That begins when white phosphorus skin
Met another person and they were sold.
Only those who would bare
A gentle soul
Are welcome to my
Sound home.
Was it jellied gasoline that soaked
The rag that gagged our mouths?
Or the not so silent violence
Between the North and South?
As the fumes of no liberty
Replace the breathable space in our lungs…
Don’t you dare ask me
What’s is my sick need to show you my disfiguration.
Only those who would bare
A gentle soul
Are welcome to my
Sound home.
I will stand with all descendants of Africa
Who taught me how to stand and speak this way.
I won’t forget
Our common root
Of our ancestry
Our human tree
When you thought me less than
When you thought me less than.
Only those who would bare
A gentle soul
Are welcome to my
Sound home.
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8. |
Laugh With Me
05:45
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Laugh With Me
Some say
Shush….
Be still now my love
Hold me here
Be still now my love
Hold me here
Hold me here
Be still now
Where the drones can’t see us
The drones can’t see us
All of the ways you always pass your days
(Passively)
Feed yourself to a self that is not your self
If separation is all I’m known for
Laugh with me
Shroud, veiled, are mornings on touched by warmth
Vapor and mist hiding the mourners and the land unfelt by dawn
On the dawn goes on and on and on
Vapor and mist hiding the mourners and the land unfelt by dawn
What does it mean to be
Human under thumb?
What does it mean to be
Under the gaze
Under unloving trust?
Of those that would, those that would
Come between us
Don’t let them come between us… Come!
All of the ways you always pass your days
(Passively)
Take the way of no way to find yourself
If separation is all I’m known for
(If it’s all I’m known for
Laugh with me.
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Walksoftly California
Walksoftly are: Michael Cooper, lyricist, bassist, and composer.
He is frequently joined by the fantastic Mark Grider (of Fedbysound) for production, guitar work, and musical curmudgeonry.
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Indifferent Rivers Romance End
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Wreck and Reference expand on their metal base to deliver a masterfully-wrought album of pain and desperation.
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disconsolate transceiver
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Brash experimental electronic compositions from this Tulsa-based musician heavy on serrated sheets of sound that hiss and scald.
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