1. |
Trouble in Mind
03:59
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I awoke and watched the wily wanton moon rise up into the attic
With a feeling that the ceiling was unearthing the source of its tale
But deep inside the sunken afternoon, I was stifled by the static
The hellhounds has been loosed by the dog-gone butchers on my trail
If you’re that way inclined and I’m thinking you to be
You’d better learn to read signs, ply yourself free
I’ve got trouble in mind that will put your burden in the shade
I took the book of haunted thought from my locker and I burned it in the furnace
I hadn’t done what I was told, I was feeling strangely bold and free
But the taunters had been taught to be watchful and to see what they could learn from us
I want to look out on the land but the dungeon gates are all that I can see
If you want to lend a helping hand, you can teach me all the codes to the kingdom
I’ll carve them on my arm, I’ll head out upon the shiny sea
If you’re that way inclined and I’m thinking you to be
You’d better learn to read signs, ply yourself free
I’ve got trouble in mind that will put your burden in the shade
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2. |
A Man in Black
02:30
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To the soaken semi-city on the summer’s skirts he’d taken his flight
In lust for a lyrical lair in which to rage by the night
The old black dog on his trail, his darkness intact
Up from his sad-eyed south came a man in black
The tiger was born but it roared and it rolled on past
He watched its sorry tale unfold through a darker glass
In the midst of that mythical mist he came under attack
A fiercer dark beast came to feast on a man in black
He said ‘Listen here, buddy, I don’t need nobody
I won’t bleed for Christ’s body or bleed for nobody
I don’t need your flurry of sympathy flooding me
Your future’s all bloody, I’m not in any hurry there’
Some say that he severed all sides, that he fell like a fawn
Others said he’d stolen away in the dead of the dawn
If he’s alive to the night or the morn, he’s sure covered his tracks
I like to dream of his being reborn, uncoiled and untaxed
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3. |
Demon Desdemona
03:57
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He came to solve a brittle mystery
With his overcoatings on
Said he knew we had a little history
It was a bleak November dawn
Well it’s true that you had kissed me
In the sleek December snow
But if I was Agatha Christie
You were Edgar Allen Poe
The last time that he’d seen ya, you were tango dancing under the moon
Down in Argentina where they sure know how to kick out a tune
I fed him a phoney, said you’d fed-exed me and phoned me from Rome
But you’re a demon, Desdemona, don’t ya know he’s gona follow ya home
It was in the crematorium
While your brave non-believer burned
You said they’d put a moratorium
On the lovers that you’d spurned
I consulted my Victorian
For the way lowdown on you
He was an exacting historian
In truth I wanted it to be true
The last time that you’d seen me, I was shadow-boxing under the midnight sun
Up in northern Norway, no way’ve telling that the daylight is done
You spun me a story about the Pied-Piped ways that you’d flown
But you’re a demon, Desdemona and you know they’re gona follow ya home
Shadows on the fields near the once sweet home where you’d grown
Where now the smooth-tongued satyr sits self-satisfied on his throne
Mother’s meadows in the midst of a heart grown listless and alone
The warm summer wind whips Faraglionian stone
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4. |
Heart in the Rheinland
04:07
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Down and outward up in Nordrhein-Westfalen
Michel-Erik was in need of a smoke
Georgey Orwell was his travellin’ companion
He was feeling abandoned, he had embers to stoke
The third child of a delicate dalliance,
Mother was a chanteuse from the banks of the Seine
Father nimbly side-stepped her Papa’s indifference
He’d been in the Resistance, there’d been others to blame
A folked-up singer in a suburb of electro,
He kept it low-key in his basement of bliss
His boyhood idyll in a haven of retro
Blown away on the metro the night of that first kiss
But now his heart is in the Rheinland
His spirit’s on the line
He’s on track to trace her trail as he glides in darkness
Like the barges on the Rhein
Now Katharina was a dangerous damsel,
Her eyes hue ice-blue in the Margots Café
She sought out loathful leering Lotharios at random
She felt commanded to damn them, she was solemn that way
But Michel-Erik wove a new kind of hymnal,
At piano in the corner, she watched him in bloom
On a melancholy Monday, he finally picked up the signal,
A fateful wait after hours the birth of glory and doom
In the silken streets of Paris, no romance was wasted
From Montmarte’s constellation to the steps of Sacre Couer
Vin by the carafe, no bouquet went untasted,
You don’t spill distillation of a vintage so pure
Now her heart is in the wine land
Her mind is on the vine
They say you’ll find the cure if you don’t mind the silence
In Burgundy and time
All along the Left Bank he’d walk in the evenings
She’d left in the autumn when he’d told her his plans
Wrestling with the question can you say that you’re grieving
When the love that you’re mourning died by your own hand
Now his heart is in the Rheinland
The narrative’s aligned
It’s too late to save it now but he’ll live to say he tried and
Keep the diamonds that he mined
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5. |
All the Knight's Moves
05:02
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There’s fire on the water
There’s tension in the dam
And a line-up for the slaughter
In the abbatoir of calm
I promised to be faithful
To the blessed creed of form
But it seems uncouth and wasteful
To dampen such a sacred storm
You can keep your simple pleasures
Undernourished and outworn
And I’ll deal in greater measures
Of the worshipped and the scorned
You seem to think that I’m craving stability
When I’m dyin’ to burst apart at the seams
There’s nothing holy ‘bout your noble tranquility
Or the jagged edges of your lithium dream
I can see all the knight’s moves from this precipice
And I’ve rediscovered a thirst for the game
The back rank’s ungaurded, yes it’s reckless chess
But oh you know I won’t be a pawn in your name
There’s venom in your vision
And poisonous control
A worship of precision
In the language that you stole
I spied on your reflections
Your spirit’s charcoal hue
Beset on the correction
Of a soul in neon blue
You long for reconnection
With the wisdom that you knew
But you’ve mastered the deflection
From the rueful and the true
You seem to think that I’m craving stability
When I’m yearning for an amphetamine sheen
You’ll be lying low by your lake of placidity
I’ll be flying high as I might with the cream of the cream
I can see all the knight’s moves fom this precipice
And I‘ve rediscovered a thirst for the game
The back rank’s ungaurded, yes it’s reckless chess
But oh you know I won’t bear the weight of your shame
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6. |
Your Man in Havana
03:01
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I’m writing this to you
From the Hotel Nacional
Where the aficianados dwell
On the Santiiago hue
Yes the Ron it ages well
But the Son is just for show
Where tobacco farmers sew
There’s another tale to sell
Well the pace of change is slow
Since the days of rebel yells
In a nation dressed up well
Without a vale in which to flow
But I’ve got a till to tell
And I’ve got a plot to hoe
And an awful lot to know
Before I weave that spell
Up in Havana
Down by the water
Your man is on the trail
Of Hasselbacher’s daughter
The star attraction
Has a silencer on his trumpet
He’s got a sure-fire action
And I’m afraid he’s gona pump it
In the Spanish squares of yore
I’ve watched unlikely couples meet
And the flames of foreign fleets
Flash toward the fore
Of the Floridita bar
In the old town’s narrow streets
Where the ghosts and shadows meet
To the bay at Cojimar
The mojitos molten sleet
The Cohiba’s perfumed tar
And the musk of deep cigars
Lingers in your sheets
But I’m off the scent so far
And I’m melting in the heat
When they find your weakest beat
They’ll cut you at the scar
Up in Havana
Down by the water
Your man hidden by a veil
Has lost the ring he’d bought her
The only promise
I ever did abandon
Haunts me in wicked ways
I could never have imagined
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7. |
A Diamond Mind
04:45
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In the era of ascendance, I was seeking out an edge
In a beerhouse at the crossroads I found him in full fledge
Fueling friendly fire, conducting on the ledge of the unknown
In the spirit of transcendance, I let go of the reins
Abandoned safetycrosscodes of the sterile and the sane
He sang in middle eastern time, spoke to me of Spain in moorish tones
You were in full flight, Gerry
A diamond mind holding court from your throne
Your father dealt in gamblers, though he’d never laid a bet
You’d rolled around with ramblers and you only played roulette
When I passed you in the High Street, you spat out ‘traitor’ yet
You could not have known
When you came burned out in anger, I was the keeper of the gate
I’d seen your soul in amber and now I’d seen it straight
I felt no recognition from a spirit so sedate and overthrown
You were broken down, Gerry
A maestro in the mire than you’d sewn
Now all your falls are steeper, your flights few and far between
The darkest days are deeper but still your spirit’s keen
In a world so grim with reapers, your corruscation seems the gleam
Of precious stone
Oh it’s alright, Gerry
There’s wisdom in the ways that you’ve flown
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8. |
A Matter of Mind
03:12
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I had a word with the wise man as he lay twisted and bent
He spoke of the fond time before he’d been spent,
Of the shape of his thoughts in the darkest of hours
His words weren’t withered, his heart hadn’t soured
He said ‘when the clouds came in closer and the night left me blind
I transcended the matter, it was only a matter of mind’
I ran into the rabbi as I broadened horizons
Blessed with a chalice, he’d filled it with poison
To drown out the drone of corrupt ancestry
He drew long on the pipe, then he passed it to me
He said ‘I looked into the shadows to see what I’d find
From the black underpass to the back of the mine’
Back on the true path of his concentrate rhyme,
He transcended the matter, it was only a matter of time
I passed on through Townes’ gallant ghost of the highway
Haunted by trails he’d left on the sky
Turned away from the road he’d wandered sublime
Chose the dual path of my own grand design
I said ‘I’ve thought long and hard now about every turn
The strong hand I was dealt was not mine to burn
Won’t you give me your blessing if I promise to earn
Song’s silver stripes oh I’ll promise to learn’
He said ‘forget not the donwtrodden or those left behind
If you must choose the matter of mind within matter
Then make it a matter of mind’
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9. |
Sublemotion
09:55
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Doctor Mirabilis Nottingham, UK
After shedding the exoskeleton of troubled troubadour JT Songs, Doctor M emerged fully formed and backed by the superb playing and production of Peyton Pinkerton on his first three albums, A Matter of Mind (2011), Exiles (2014), and The Captain’s Chorus (2017). Aims and Methods (2023) signals a new musical direction and the first release recorded and mixed at Doctor M’s own Sublemotion Studios. ... more
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