Deforestation of Dak (2009)
Peel Intro
Okay listeners, I think you could probably agree with me that that was a pretty far-out track. Now, coming up in the next half hour we’ve got a seven-inch sent in from Stinky and the Peepholes, an Essex band who don’t care what they play, also a twelve-inch from an Indian band called Gui’Varsh who do care what they play but they won’t tell me even though I’ve given them an awful lot of money which I think is personally quite disgusting. And an entire LP from Swedish rock legends Vitnitronic at a specially-pressed 78 rpm. That should sound good to your ears and to mine as well. Now, on with the rest of the show. People often ask me, “Oi! Peel! Haven’t you ever played” – “why don’t you” – or “have you ever listened to our demos?” and the reason is, if anybody ever watched the documentary on BBC2 a couple of years ago will know that my house is like one giant music library and it disgusts my wife. Obviously I’ve got endless copies of Teenage Kicks in my house, but unfortunately my whole family, my wife and I are drowning in this stuff. You have to watch out sometimes especially on a Thursday because rock turns up in the most unexpected places. Just last Tuesday I was sitting in er in my dining room eating my own bowl of cornflakes just before I came to do a er show, I went to take a swig of tea and something fell against my lips. And lo and behold it was a CD. That CD is this CD that’s coming up now. So on with the first track, it’s called Chancery Lane.
Chancery Lane
Through the city of London tonight
There’s rich men bloated on the carcase of life
If money talks then they’re the translators
Laws are twisted by these legislators
Hailing cabs from the Courts of Justice
Pulses racing with dreams of avarice
Tasting the fruits of a privileged position
Take the cash, smash the opposition
And everybody is picking up the bill
And everybody, watching them steal, watching them steal
From the Strand through Chancery Lane
Streets of splendour, but oh what shame
Canary Wharf overlooking it all
Like gaudy candles on this cake of sprawl
In this game there’s still all to play for
Though the chips may be stacked in their favour
So every march every seditious journal
Is a finger in the ribs that resistance is fertile
Cos everybody is picking up the bill
Everybody, watching them steal, watching them steal
There’s always those with uses
for civil rights abuses
And jargon for excuses -
journalese, legalese, gagging fees
Court order served, the server taken down for proof
Suspicion of harbouring the truth
Court order served, you must not ride here anymore
It’s just like 1984
The state handed over to private interest
That drives the agenda, from motorist to militarist
And everybody is picking up their bill
And everybody, watching them steal, watching them steal
There’s always those with uses
for civil rights abuses
And jargon for excuses -
journalese, legalese, gagging fees
There’s always those with uses
for civil rights abuses
And when they’ve worn out their excuses:
Turn away, turn away, turn away
Think Alike
We went out in public but didn’t last long (didn’t last long)
We turned round and got the bus back home
This damnable stomach gets on my nerves
And the blanket acceptance of their terms
We try to keep away from photocopied minds
And we try to keep away from
Sunlight hurts our eyes so
Meet us in the dead of night
Meet us under UV
Polite to a fault, green peppermint tea (Would you like a cup of tea?)
You may mock, but these things are important to me
Your scrawlings and etchings, absurdist and true (‘surdist and true)
I think that we could find a use for you
Phone box shards of the fractured nation state
That we try to keep away
Sunlight hurts our eyes so
Meet us in the dead of night
Meet us under UV
Revenge is a beautiful word (beautiful word)
A pleasing sound in the pit of the throat
Every injustice colours my sight (covers my sight)
As it might to any technicolor sprite
Apathy – it doesn’t grind us down
Moulded futures
Slip beneath the radar
Slip beneath the everyday
Slip beneath the ground war
You will find us every day
Be sincere my darling
We will meet you every day
I want to plan with you in the daytime
I want to form with you in the nighttime
I want to bear with you in the daytime
I want to snare with you in the nighttime
I want to act with you in the daytime
I want to take with you in the nighttime
I want to merge with you in the daytime
I want to purge with you in the nighttime
I want to plan with you
I want to form with you
I want to bear with you
I want to snare with you
I want to act with you
I want to take with you
I want to merge with you
I want to purge with you
In the daytime, in the nighttime
In the daytime, in the nighttime, oh
In the daytime, nighttime
Daytime, nighttime
Daytime, nighttime
Daytime, nighttiiiiime
Scraping And Bowing
Tangled strands of your life and my life
knot up like my hair
We catch a train to a turgid somewhere old
Ruptured thoughts that slither and spatter
inside of my head
Send me nauseous for the porcelain bowl
Scraping and bowing, and scraping again
does nothing for your system
just gives you rheumatism
Sally sneers, her ballet Napoleon
has sunk without trace in a blue rinse
But all I want, she storms, is teenage boys
The girl has wit – her discourse on Chaucer
not visible, welcome or hip
Although spiced up with crack dens and sex toys
Crying and shouting and knocking them back
She stamps her heavy feet
and beats a sad retreat to the loo
A life’s main dilemma
played out in rep each night
What if my limitations are what keeps me alright?
A safety valve, a timed release
A way to discern between that and this
Worry lines that deepen like treason
Relief maps of pain
Sharpened pencils etch their groove again
Poor young soul, he strove and he strove
despite lack of a brain to judge with
and he drove himself onto a coronary
His sixty-fifth self-published novella
now hung out to dry in the death wind
Something gives with the critical faculty
Scraping and bowing, and scraping again
Scraping and bowing, and scraping again
Buttercup Monk
Buttercup monk in floral dress
Glides to my abode
Graces my feasting table
To enjoy the simple fruits
He speaks in hazy days of concentration
of the old society, stretched, pushed to the limits
What will become of us
Will things go in reverse
Backs arched, hairy all over
Picking all the berries off the bush
I do not know, for I am not as wise as Dennis
or as smart as Lisa
All I know is:
Eggs float when they’re off
We’re not that bad
All I know is:
Eggs float when they’re off
We’re not that bad
Before We Began
I took a fresh page in my notebook
to remake a list of plans
You know the kind I’m getting at
The kind that bubble up repeatedly in the mindflow
Causing momentary pain
And the list went on forever
or at least to the second page
and I was filled with a sudden rage
that I would need two lives to accomplish half a page worth
of these sad deluded dreams
and you can take a man out of his job
but can you force a man to stick to his plans?
And all the time that got stuck in the fan
I try to shape it but it falls from my hands
It just rebels when faced with all my demands
I’m further back now than before I began
Before I began
Will you come round to my place now
Cos I know that you keep lists too
They get more fruity as your mood improves
And I’ve not been rifling through your things but I’ll wager
They’re as long at least as mine
And the life that I am living is a pain in the sodding arse
Is it quite too much to ask
that we can synchronise for one night out of seven
without both falling asleep?
and you can take a man out of his job
but can you force a man to stick to his plans?
And all the time that got stuck in the fan
I try to shape it but it falls from my hands
It just rebels when faced with all our demands
We’re further back now than before we began
Before we began
I Am Alba
Mourn my hi-fi
It died last night
I was there when it drew
its last breath
Part of my growing up
It’s seen many things
Played through happy times
Belted out through hard times
Well the tape deck went first
Then the CD player broke
Eventually the knob fell off
I will buy a replacement one
When the grief has gone
I am broken, I am alba
If You Were
If you were a pill I could slip in my coffee
I’d drink in your essence to help me sleep.
If you were a song or a page from a playscript
Then I could recite you in my unquiet dreams.
If you were a knife I think I’d let you cut me
We’d bleed out the demons and bleed out the dirt.
I need you here
And that’s not complex
But I’m not sorry
I need you here
And that’s not witty
But it’s honest
It’s honest.
If you were here right now instead of in this wordplay
We’d give up on masks and foolish conceits.
I need you here
With no more hiding
Behind language
I need you here
And that’s not witty
And that’s not clever
But it’s honest.
Scandinavian Pine
Regimented to a fault
Silent our new forest grows
It takes in CO2 and stuff
But doesn’t seem quite real enough
Treated, sprayed and canopied
To keep off acid rain, you see
Forgive me if I think it’s strange
That it’s geometrically arranged
There’s a path near where I live
Leading up to a vandalised clearing
The London skyline chills my soul
Such power without feeling, leaves me screaming
Residents all up in arms
About an eco offshore farm
That makes electric from the wind
Guess they could plug the windbags in
Protestors clog the evening news
They say it spoils the bland flat view
Blocking the greenest thing they fear
You presume they relish dirty nuclear
Our bloated leaders sit in warmth
Dining out, signing deals without feeling
Save the rumble of their guts
This city’s ripe for stealing, ripe for stealing
Let me hug you now – Scandinavian pine
Tell me all your secrets and I’ll tell you mine
To the Gaia whole from a rootless man
There must be some room inbetween all their plans
From a dreaming soul to the unseen eyes
There must be some truth inbetween all their lies
To the Gaia, to the Gaia whole
The devil’s in the detail, boys
Like who this logging firm employs
With dubious legality
Cheap labour to fell a tree
Long hours on the gang today
Breaking backs for pittance pay
Migrants freezing out of doors
Wondering what they came here for, what they came here for.
Breaking The Tape
The extent you believe
Enough to make me grieve
Are you only the credulous?
Then the day’s already lost
Our fragments don’t add up to lives
Conserving supplies now
Living in the mind now
The world is bluffing
Attend to nothing
The language slides and melts outside
Knock me to the floor dear
Remind me I’m still here
But you won’t even hurt me
Jesus who should I be
Cos you think I might break
That’s the point for Christ’s sake
Anna
Sitting at the Akai desk
Splurge of creativity
The dark-haired loopy voice
Hither come from Germany
Set off in my youthful mind
New expanse of energy
But please would you repeat the words
For the sake of clarity
Taking tools and making new forms
Sending out those sounds newborn
Anna – creativism’s queen
Anna – psychedelic dream
Out of conversation
She’s running through her digimind
Scoops up errant bars in turn
And chops and twists and winds
The modernist expression
And the musique concrete
A polyrhythmic siren
We tracked her marks and stretched
Faking rules and breaking tone laws
Gold in the mouth of the Sun
Anna – creativism’s queen
Anna – psychedelic dream
Anna – psychedelic dream
She’s coming, she’s coming
She’s coming round the mixer (x6)
Halloween
Halloween… (x4)
Halloween is such a nice time
(Why is it a nice time then?)
I dunno, just is – but let me tell you about it
Bats come out
Children come out
In their finest costumes
Made of black
Faces painted in lime green
(It makes you sick)
Halloween (x4)
Pumpkin pie (x3)
(Won’t you give it a try?)
It tastes nice (EAT IT!)
Mother’s serving pumpkin pie
On plastic plates for the children
(the children?!)
“Talking”, she tells them
it will feed them all
You’ll get fat
You’ll get wide
You’ll feel sick
and then you’ll die
Into the cemetery you will go
Six feet under you will be placed
Perhaps in a wooden box
Or maybe not
What a horrible end
(Maggots!)
In the fiery depths of hell (x3)
(Hello Be’elzebub! You awright are you?)
Hello there young man! Would you like to buy a used car?
In the fiery depths of hell
You’ll meet Satan and his three pronged friend
Yes – he will poke you
And he’ll roast you
That will be your end
Halloween will not be your friend
You won’t see God
NEVER AGAIN
Task
We’re up the creek without a paddle
Finances weak, in fact they’re addled
Things have been bleak, but now it’s sweet summertime
What say you this – let’s get the map down
Pick a few points, maybe at random
That makes a route – let’s get the bicycles out
Let’s see the furthest we can travel in an hour (woh woh oo)
Let’s see the furthest we can travel in a day (woh woh oo)
Let’s see the furthest we can travel in a year (woh woh oo)
Let’s see the most unusual things that we can see
There is such eccentricity to gobble
We’re up the creek without a paddle
Finances weak, in fact they’re addled
Things have been bleak, but now it’s sweet summertime
What say you this – let’s work to order
Pack up some snacks, a drink of water
That’s all we need – let’s get the bicycles out
The simple pleasure of a journey somewhere new
The buried treasure of an unexpected view
There are a thousand places we can see
And oh my darling even better than arriving is to travel hopefully
So break it down, please
Ahh – the simple pleasure of a journey somewhere new
Ahh – the buried treasure of an unexpected view
Ahh – a gentle measure of an undercluttered day
Ahh – it’s quite enough to make a Keshcologist say (and I say)
We’re up the creek without a paddle
Finances weak, in fact they’re addled
Things have been bleak, but now it’s sweet summertime
What say you this – let’s take the path down
On through the next expanse of woodland
Sehr wunderbar! Let’s get the bicycles out
Ohhh and I feel alive – I could be human
And you look just fine – you could be human
We’ve all the time – be honest, decent and true
Because the only thing that’s better than adventure is adventuring with you!
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