1. |
Repeat Prescription
03:00
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2. |
Closure Order
03:35
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CLOSURE ORDER
Shut down like a coal mine
Shut down like a local railway line
Shut down like a Woolworth’s Store
Shut down like the Clyde’s south shore
Shut down like a Victorian baths
Shut down like a public path
Shut down like premature hype
Shut down like a stereotype
Shun novelty and shed your friends
Be your own prison warder
This property is not condemned
It’s preserved by closure order
Shut down like a village pub
Shut down like a strip club
Shut down like a Norton factory
Shut down like a Hollywood finale
Shut down like a cobbler’s shop
Shut down like Top of the Pops
Shut down like an Italian cafe
Shut down like a stock clichè
Shun novelty and shed your friends
Be your own prison warder
This property is not condemned
It’s preserved by closure order
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3. |
A Safe Place
03:40
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A SAFE PLACE
Keep your eyes to yourself
if you want to see them again;
Stuff ‘em in your pocket and save them for later
Until this has come to an end.
Keep your hands to yourself
If you want to feel them again -
Hold your peace and try to hold onto your hat
Then we can all be friends.
There’s no time for any brave faces
You know where the only safe place is.
Keep your thoughts to yourself
If you’ve got any thoughts left to keep -
They might be the only things of value to you
But to us it all comes cheap.
Keep your self to yourself
If you’ve got any self left to keep;
Pieces of you keep falling away
While you breathe, while you sleep.
There’s no time for any brave faces
You know where the only safe place is.
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4. |
Organic Shrapnel
04:28
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ORGANIC SHRAPNEL
1. No misery like happiness –
Hated for love.
Envy abounds at the love we’ve found;
Hawks preying on doves.
We build high our fences
To keep the enemy from breaking in;
From breaching our barbed defences,
Keeping unclean out and chosen in.
What’s mine is yours, is ours.
What’s yours, is mine, it’s ours.
2. No misery like happiness
Got the best, fear the worst.
But to live inside a bubble and hide
Is to fear it will burst.
There’s no respect for piety,
No respect for righteousness.
In a loveless society
What is cursed is what is blessed.
What’s mine is yours, is ours.
What’s yours, is mine, it’s ours:
Keep away.
But you can’t trust the jealous
To fight fair in love or war,
To forge alliances to quell us
Organic shrapnel, upright whores.
What’s mine is yours, is ours
Keep away.
No misery like happiness
No hatred quite like love.
As we look askance ,across our vulnerable flanks
Who’re the hawks and who the doves?
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5. |
Ghost River Estate
03:12
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6. |
Lullaby for Idle Lovers
05:09
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LULLABY FOR IDLE LOVERS
She’s a thing of beauty
And a joy for now,
Bold of décolletage
But vague of why and how.
He’s a piece of work
He’s a work of art.
Shrugged out of pretty nothings
That come straight from the heart.
Quiet now, the idle lovers are sleeping
It’s all they know and all they need to know.
And later when they wake with sleepy kisses
They won’t remember where the hours go.
He’s got nothing to say:
He wants to write a constitution.
Commit it to amnesia,
Commit it to an institution.
Quiet now, the idle lovers are sleeping
It’s all they know and all they need to know.
And later when they wake with sleepy kisses
They won’t remember where the hours go.
She believes in nothing
But her right to be believed in.
So on this empty vessel
They’ll set sail for the four winds.
Quiet now, the idle lovers are sleeping
It’s all they know and all they need to know.
And later when they wake with sleepy kisses
They won’t remember where the hours go.
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7. |
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NOTE TO SUBS
That’s not house style around these parts -
Too formal when what we want is chatter;
Too long for headline, too short for standfirst,
Best just dump it with the over-matter.
Use ampersands and acronyms
Shrinking pages mean shrinking words.
Sentence the chaff to the margins –
Widows and orphans first.
It’s elementary, dear boy, it’s the rule of thumb
Being too clever is just dumb.
But I can’t seem to twist myself
To prize medium over message.
I can’t seem to cut myself
To fit this crooked usage.
Don’t fret about the substance
It’s already on the chromalyn.
A schoolboy error, to labour sense
That’s not typing, that’s writing
It’s elementary, dear boy, it’s the rule of thumb
Being too clever is just dumb.
But I can’t seem to twist myself
To prize the medium over message
I can’t seem to cut myself
To fit this crooked usage
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8. |
Voids/Vacancies
01:22
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9. |
From the Vaults
04:32
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FROM THE VAULTS
I don’t have designs to define you
To try to catalogue or confine you;
I don’t want to express myself
And end up sounding like everyone else.
I don’t want to pick words from stock
And feel that they are left, left in hock
I don’t want to be in anybody’s
Debt but yours. So I give you these.
Like a vintage wine or inherited wealth
These words come up from the vaults.
By design and not by stealth
In their perfection, in all their faults.
Not kept in the dark like last year’s apples
Not rusting away like hoarded scrap metal,
Sequestered, deformed, decayed –
Blinking into day, pale and afraid.
More reliable than recovered memory
More valuable than any stashed currency:
Words that unearth that uproot
Words that open up like a parachute.
Like a lost film reel, or an analogue spool,
These words come up from the vaults.
Unearthed by feel and not by rule
In their perfection, in all their faults.
Does this sound familiar?
Have you heard it all before?
Too pedantic and old fashioned
Because listening to words is a chore.
Like a tapped desire, like a channelled id
These words come up from the vaults,
Always aiming higher, keeping nothing hid
In their perfection, in all their faults.
This one comes up from the vaults
This one comes up from the vaults.
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10. |
Slow Medicine no. 2
05:16
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11. |
Slow Medicine
04:32
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SLOW MEDICINE
She is slow medicine –
A spoonful of sugar won’t make her go down.
An erotic empathogen:
What she withholds is the thing that resounds.
Words are slow medicine,
Distilled into cliché and bland platitudes;
Shake the alembic again –
To see what rises when the dregs are subdued,
It’s not getting, it’s not getting,
It’s not getting any better.
She is slow medicine,
No quick fix, placebo or palliative.
Cautions of toxins –
Always harder to take than to give
Words are slow medicine,
Leisurely working their way through your system;
An active allergen,
Always easier to talk than to listen.
It’s not getting, it’s not getting,
It’s not getting any better.
Neither poppy nor curare,
Ergot or agaric,
Stupefying or visionary,
Hallucinogenic, soporific or ecstatic.
It’s not getting, it’s not getting,
It’s not getting any better.
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12. |
Memory Tag
04:11
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MEMORY TAG
Remember me, in case I should forget myself
And think I’m somebody, or just somebody else.
Do I treat every offer as if it’s my last spree?
Or curl up on the sofa with that special DVD?
Identify me in the line-up parade.
Indemnify me from choices I’ve made:
Decisions delayed.
Am I holistic or atomised, organic or digital?
Freelance or franchised, analogue or chemical?
Am I proactive or reactionary, roundhead or square?
Social wolf or lone butterfly? Who am I? What am I? Who cares?
Identify me in the lifestyle parade.
Indemnify me from choices I’ve made:
Decisions waylaid.
Write it on a post-it note,
Take a polaroid to remind me,
In case I should lose myself
And need some clue to find me.
Identify me in the mortuary arcade.
Indemnify me from choices un-made:
A life I’ve mislaid; a life I’ve mislaid.
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Slow Medicine London, UK
Slow Medicine creates music that ranges from art rock to ambient, avant garde to piano ballad, disco to folk, tweaked and
twisted via electronics and sound-effects.
Slow Medicine blurs the lines between live and studio, outside and inside, electric and acoustic, organic and processed, analogue and digital.
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