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Live At The Victoria

by Thumpermonkey

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1.
From Emmonak down to Versailles, there’s rabbit holes full up with wine. Go get yourself 400 high on the vine. All holy itch and hot belief, still growing branches for their teeth. Turn your body into a tree; say you can drink what you can draw from me. Wherever you go, still digging in your heels until you’re fed. If you’re not built for the snow, then come on back to bed. M.N.O. Drag him round from door to door, Like a pit bull with a locking jaw.
2.
Think you can fold him up; put the boy in your pocket. He guessed what clothes you'd wear, what furniture you'd throw across the room. Still think that you're getting buzz from Best Western Bars and Belgian Cigarettes. Long as he lets you tie one off around his throat you're making best use of his silhouette. Maybe you can turn this inside-out, only squeeze the word out so you can bite your tongue, when you demand he kneel down, cold-lashed to the radiator. If what you do behind closed doors has become sacred, why, why, does it only start to itch when the weekend sessions' done? Does he lie down when he is told like cattle underneath the umbra. What small imagination joins you will not split asunder. If you get ditzy on the line between anxiety and afterglow, best get back in the saddle 'til he's pretending he feels guilty just to get you O. He's on fire but only when he knows he can hide in the walk-in. His safety word is. His safety word is so safe he's forgotten where he put it. Turn the lights out. What you do behind closed doors is boring us to murder, now the weekend sessions' done. You take a bite you eat the whole thing. There's no half-measures at this bar today. The more he strains, the more you'll half expect him - dosed up on your doorstep like some jingle-bell on Christmas day. He looks at you like that, you can't help laughing. He looks at you like that, you can't refuse. You don't crack the can and let the worms out, unless you brought a bigger one to squeeze them into if you lose.
3.
I don't know if I'm paralysed, or if I'm standing still, just in case it's perfect... but when I try to describe the noise in this room, words that come to me sound like entomology, and that's when I’m furthest away from naming it again. One night out on the veldt, fell into that glowing cave. I had no idea there were such spaces in me. I can't believe I've become fascinated again. Nothing like I thought that it would be, hidden in here. Things that glow down here don't burn my skin. Did you always know that this was in? I'm fascinated again. Part of me's laughing but part of me's something that I'll never ever name. I can't believe I've become fascinated again. Back above the ground, I cannot speak. Came back minutes old, 'cos you led me here. I would not have found this on my own.
4.
My deckchair's in the garden for the final show. Every suicide novella ends as spiderlegged code. A vague scribble of confused intimacy. People like me, people who they say cannot love; its gas like that which starts me thinking I should prove them all right, in the most abominable ways. Long mindless tentacles of heat stretch from the sun, germinating some nameless desire I can’t fathom, 'til I close my eyes. If you populate your identical dreams with tiny creatures, they'll keep talking, and keep talking, and keep talking, and keep talking. Each voice describes an asteroid colliding with the planet, somehow if it isn't my fault, then the story doesn't make sense. Then I feel them find you miles away and dig you up and lock you in a vault; I've never been so scared I'll never find your body. Hiding in plain sight, I can't remember why I'm hiding, and I struggle to remember if I'm the one who killed you. It's a relief to know they can't hold me to ransom, 'cos what I did or didn't do doesn't matter; I'm not suicidal, I just want to sit down. I've given up pretending memories retain any real authenticity. I've set a deckchair for your ghost so that we can both watch flames lick at the celestial horizon. Future kin will breathe our dust, uninformed. If you populate your identical dreams with tiny creatures, they'll keep talking, and keep talking, and keep talking. They can’t help me to remember why I'm hiding, and I struggle to remember, and the story doesn't make sense. Then I feel them find you miles away and rouse you into preternatural life, somewhere that I can’t hear you. They can’t help me to remember why I'm hiding and I struggle to remember if I'm the one who killed you. I'd rather lose the marrow inside my bones than an argument that I'll never understand.
5.
Garmonbozia. Hate your time and fury. Electricity from pure air. We have descended from pure air. You come in out of the dark. You come in pieces, pieces. Rising and falling forever. Rising and falling again. Rising and falling forever. Rising and falling, You come in out of the dark. You come in from outside.
6.
Can't stay here - too stupid to run away. Take shallow comfort in cold calling end times - so come fill my boots up. Allium cepa, I don't care, I'll give it a shot. Shake thought from the skull. This is not a fire. If you can't eat it, then it means nothing. Soon as you own it, well it gets jaded quickly. If you can't spin it, just go to sleep before it gives you ideas. Morbid effluvia. Read your bright bright miasma - it must be true.When you caps lock that at me. Infernal vaccine - I don't care, I just wanna laugh, shake thought from the skull. This is not a fire. If you can't eat it, then it means nothing. Soon as you own it, well it gets jaded quickly. If you can't spin it, you have to kill before it shows you up. It doesn't come back because it wants a scratch behind its ears. It comes back cos it's hungry. One night’s feverish dream conjures Mesopotamia. You float a thousand yards above the desert, hidden genius in your ear. Whispering, “bring your electric ships through Euphratean canals - we love you just the way you are”. COMPARE. SHARE. COMPARE. This isn't a fire, whatever they told you. I DON'T WANT TO READ IT. I’LL SPIT IT RIGHT IN YOUR FACE, IN YOUR FACE AGAIN.I’LL DO IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER.
7.
When she and I were first introduced by the Dean, it became clear to me that we were both in attendance at the Canadian Institute of Incendiary Morphology for quite different reasons. She'd stared on, duck-faced, as the Professor reminisced about his viewing of Southgate's millennial frivolity; a mechanism that would brand a prediction of the weather forecast onto food prior to consumption. She'd angrily coughed her vol-au-vent into a handkerchief; after all, this was a house of research - and that was her tell. The false piety of a woman secretly taking terrible pleasure in her work. I proceeded to get her drunk. This is how it starts; I don't get off on it. I get off on you; you getting off on it.She told me about her visions; visitations from a nineteen-thirteen Lloyd Groff Copeman, on some nights, a nineteen-nineteen Charles Strite with an intact nichrome filament. Both would sear stigmata onto her palms that faded by sundown. When I declared ownership of a working Scharfenberg Sunbeam T-9, I could almost sense the blood surging to the skin on her chest. That night we purchased bread on the black market and visited my collection. How she wept. And while our relations became egregiously sensual, it became clear she was merely trying to engender an academic convert. Ah, my little Jerónimo de Aguilar, marooned with her ideals amongst the heathens, obsession pushing her beyond conventional physical satisfaction. Inevitably, she began spending more and more time with my machines. I returned home one night to find a corpse, surrounded by enough oxidised toast to fill every grain silo in the Tower of Babel. Wir braten unser brot unter ihrem heiligen feuer. You shriek when it's at your throat, but can't resist when it's driving the car.
8.
Who borrowed you my fingers? Spit, mascara, knuckle – eye. You panda streak, I don't know what we talked about. Drop gather to cloudburst, your running pace won't help me fly, and all I'll have tomorrow is a broken mouth. Brought luck and good intentions, months curled in a sick bed; I'm sweating pure salbutamol, don't kiss my face. You want the piece I mentioned, hold my nose and cracked my head. Dig into my mouth, find chewed up love replaced. Put it right back where you found it, put it right back where you found it, put it away. Foxfire. This ain't no hullabullusion. High Wire; She hits the floor like original sin. Foxfire, oh lock and load, I hunt it down, before I know it I'm a P-Pariah chewing on a misfire. Just wait a, give me a, just wait a, I need a second. It's buried in my stomach, I'll fawn and patter round your feet, but if you think I'm worth the effort then I'll run a mile. Forgot how to be Holy, I've long forgotten how to read, missing teeth in bad dreams, I should learn to dance. Tongue cut on my chin again, please put me in the bathtub. Feed me a banana, stop me, seeing stars.
9.
Frogs pipe in dank reeds while New England seethes. Birds hurl their bodies at the gambrel roof. No there's not a fire from earth can burn it, no, no. No there's not a fire from earth can burn it, no, no. No there's not a fire from earth can leave a mark on his home. No there's not a fire from earth can leave a mark. You're not afraid of the birds shrilling at the stolen dead. Big as a barn, they said. Not your wetlimb, ropemade eyes, eyes, eyes. Just the still; your slowdown and miserable crawl home. Orgy from May Eve to All-Hallows pit. No cosmic horror, just ripe decadence.

about

Featuring a set that is drawn from the breadth of Thumpermonkey's unique back catalogue, these songs cover it all.
From the minutia of modern existence as captured in the world of fascism and electric toasters to asteroid sized songs concerning life/ death and galactic fatalism.
All wreathed in Flaming Satellites.
Naturally.

credits

released October 11, 2019

Thumpermonkey is: Rael Jones, Sam Warren, Michael Woodman, Ben Wren.

All tracks mixed by Al Green, except 'Whateley', mixed by Ben Wren.

Mastered by Ben Wren.

All tracks recorded by The Drum Tamer @ Hidden Colour Audio.
Tracks 1 to 8 recorded at The Victoria, Dalston, on London on 31st May 2019.
"Whateley" recorded at West Street Live, Sheffield on 23rd July 2017.

Front cover photography by #simonkallas.

Cover design by Michael Woodman.

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tags

about

Thumpermonkey London, UK

A person in space, walking, or adrift, but safe, exploring, freedom, discovery.

A clockwork piano contraption, like a giant ballerina box, but turning a big totem pole, around which smart office dressed people slowly dance with dead glazed eyes as a slightly out of tune slow Satie-like Lydian melody loops round.

White men in pith helmets hunting large animals to extinction.
... more

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