1. |
The Quiet Earth
01:43
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The Quiet Earth
Airships fells from the sky like punctured planets.
Land mines were primed n the fields.
It will become a beautiful scenery line in their lives.
Why does nature insist on surviving?
The car lurches forward – is there anyone driving?
It's a beautiful day in a world that I don't understand.
It's a beautiful world, and a day without reprimand.
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2. |
Polestar
03:13
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Polestar
Can I bear being without you?
My Icarus on crack.
Another attack
Of lamenting your lack.
Like lightning piercing my heart
I can't comprehend
How you caught me.
All mangled in wires
With my rock star for hire,
You are all of desire in one body.
If my polestar were snuffed
From the night sky, 'enough'
Would be tough.
My heart oozing tar
As the memory of blood
Snuffs the antifreeze from my dull organ.
Tapping sap from the trees,
Who's wintered birch arms, scarred
Yawn to the polar night sun.
I burn in your system
I hang on your unanswered.
I writhe in your half-life.
I bleed you
I dream you.
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3. |
The House
05:20
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The House
The is hearth where the thinker would sit and have
Fits of the mind when he saw nature cravenly misbehaving.
And this is the glass you would raise every night to the
Cracks in the road to heaven's paving.
This is the roof on whose sickened red tiles there would
Bloom eyes when the stars started caving.
And this is the sickle on who's blade there would trickle
Sweet fluids that the druids were saving.
This is the lamp that would flicker with bugs
As you stared at the filament for days that would go on unending.
And this is the glue that had worn off the stamps
You were reusing on letters that never quite got to the sending.
And this is the clapper of the bell that would signal the
End of the hell in that war you would lose many friends in.
And this is the note you would leave to yourself
To intercept on the other side, afterlife-pending.
This is the hammer which they used in the auction when they
Sold off the suit that you died in.
And this is the book where they found gnostic scripture
Which when uttered would usher the tide in.
This is the box that contained the brown locks of
The brother who's memory you'd hide in.
And this is the candle in who's smoke you'd see visions,
The meaning of which you would stay up all weekend deciding.
This is the pine frame in which hangs the door
That for all your long years stayed unopened.
And this is the shame that you burned in the mirror
When it didn't play the game and give you the answers for which you were hoping.
This is the wall that would palpitate and snigger and
Wheeze at the ludicrous ways you would find yourself coping.
And this is the step where you'd sit with the
Feather from the swan on who's back you would one warm night dream of eloping.
This is the bath where you'd empty your veins of all
Blood and whatever corrosive new drug you were using.
And this is the nib of the pen whose shrill tip you
Dug deep to scratch out the un-knowable last words of your choosing.
This is the actor who's journeyman portrayal of
Your harrowing last hours, was as far it goes quite amusing.
And this is the song that for right or for wrong
Was commissioned by your son who's commitment in life you were losing.
And this is the sentence that offered repentance as
The tall veil of tears washed away when your boy got the news in –
He said “I love you, father, and as much as I'd rather you were here,
I like you more now you're gone,
Signed in the quill of a swan, oh father, now life can go on.”
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4. |
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The Parts That Need Replacing
The medicine of death is best swallowed with laughter
Scuppered convictions dim the stage lights
Belief sustains the object of belief
Eat the parts that need replacing
I’ve used up angels like batteries.
And human nature hates you.
Sour release and sweet relief.
Eat the parts that need replacing.
Only biology cares to survive.
A killer, consciousness contrives.
The body alone can process grief.
Eat the parts that need replacing.
I cut your hair and missed a bit
And now your head drains on the floor.
The gift of death, munificent thief -
Eat the parts that need replacing.
The best special effects are those you don’t see
Like empathy without feeling
Our time on hell is oh so brief
Eat the parts that need replacing
Memory resides inside the body.
Let me help you forget
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5. |
Kidnapping An Heiress
04:44
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Kidnapping An Heiress
Perhaps you were thinking about kidnapping an heiress?
Taking some time out to kidnap an heiress?
Cast off your shackles,
Come out of the cold,
Invest in some gaffa and do something bold.
She’s a state apparatus,
And she’s decked out to bait us
Even her blindfold is bespoke, and what’s more...
...Perhaps you were thinking about kidnapping an heiress?
Taking a career break to kidnap an heiress?
Peel off your suit,
Get your Rolex sold,
Out-of-box-thinking, breaking the mould.
Time to make off with the petty cash,
A diplomatic trolley dash.
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6. |
Charboy In The Cinders
05:20
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Charboy In The Cinders
I met a dying artist by the yellow-reeded river
The clouds were stiff as bruises and the moon a prickling sliver
He muttered as the air got swallowed by the night “it’s frightening -
But a painting only is complete
When it’s been struck by lightning.”
“The past it seems so long ago
The present is too strong a woe
The future it is wrong to know
So burn them all.”
And dowsing down the silver grove
A charboy in the cinders -
Wanking, wailing ‘I adore you’,
Waving sticky, tiny hands
The scent of mandragora and the filth all on his fingers,
And his kerosene squeal peeling out amongst the embers
And the tiny stain that lingers is
An agonising cry across the land.
Suddenly I have no religion -
I am the latest version,
Waiting for the first incision
From a brand new, loving surgeon.
Cut me up, tie me down, tie me off.
The suspect resists rapture,
Screaming ‘Boy, I’m going nowhere’
Screaming ‘boy I’m going nowhere, and I hope to get there soon’.
He’s a very skilful actor
Nowhere quickly, nowhere soon
Amidst the crying and the laughter
Nowhere quickly, nowhere soon,
Between the rabbit and the raptor,
Nowhere quickly, nowhere soon.
Between the captive and his captor
Nowhere quickly, nowhere soon.
Between the shafted and the shafter
Nowhere quickly, nowhere soon.
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7. |
Rose Devoid Of Form
05:16
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Rose Devoid Of Form
Gather your memories, its soon time to leave,
I was dreaming so hard I could get reprieve.
I look out on the knackered and screaming dead streets,
And as my skin clatters around my feet -
Think of me kindly for I am become the storm -
Even the gangsters I once thought so cool,
Have been made grey and coarse in pursuit of the cruel,
Howling recidivists, saints of the dregs
Many have lost the use of their legs.
Oh the slate-marble skies leave a stain on your soul
And the month in hotels was like walking on coal,
Being beaten by monks with blue ice on your spine,
Yet still being insistent that everything's fine.
The love that we made out of crystal and heat,
Inside of each other, our bodies complete.
Once was the hour I'd lick your tiny feet,
The wax and the welts and the torn, battered sheets.
Mute applause as the sun barely bothers to rise,
Pearly grit in our hair and the moon in our eyes.
We've all done our time in the palace of dreams,
Unravelled reality, ripped at the seams.
Gazing back at the frescoes so hopeful, so drear
I pose like a half-life-made-flesh puppeteer
Marionette of my memories, dangling like bones
From my worn, hook-like fingers, all creaks and all groans.
Time is elastic. I'm no longer child:
Savage and stoic and wired and wild,
Watching history repeat in the chatter of bars
From my cold, lunar cliff-face on the furthest of stars.
Blood-red white noise, a rose devoid of form,
Think of me kindly - for I am become the storm.
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8. |
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Interlude - Happy Nerve Endings
Orgies in the temple
Tonight we are hunters again
With happy nerve endings
And lives to spare.
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9. |
So What, Caravaggio
05:14
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So What, Caravaggio
The sort of boy that never learns.
A bag of rage and carpet burns;
Leans in to do another line.
Kills himself to prove he's fine.
So what? Caravaggio was a murderer.
Wrings the toxins from his hair;
Bottles them to sell at the fair.
Nose is cakes with snot and blood.
Fights until he's understood.
So what? Caravaggio was a murderer.
Angels with dirty faces and dirty hands
From dirty places with dirty plans
Formed of dirty sneers and dirty answers
Pumping out dirty tears from dirty glands.
I can feel my skeleton protesting its cargo.
So what? Caravaggio was a murderer.
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10. |
Don't Touch The Animals
05:16
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Don't Touch The Animals
I wander 'cross the pebble beach
With my heart happy out of reach.
Don't touch the animals; don't touch the animals.
Poetry in motion
Animals in transit
Religion is a mental illness
Life is a near-death experience
Gunther - give them a shove
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11. |
Inferior Designs
02:35
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Inferior Designs
When water from the spring becomes
Grey milk before our eyes,
Curdled by indifference to
The essence of surprise.
The grail cup was full of wasps.
And now my mouth is swollen.
I haven't craved what I have lost,
Since I saw the ghost who stole you.
Human beings seem so vile,
Maybe I'll become a book.
Perhaps I'll go away a while,
Or maybe I'll take one more look.
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12. |
Couch Surfer
04:08
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Couch Surfer
A bestiary of your greatest fears -
Your life, too silent a disco.
Ask yourself in twenty-one years
‘Where on earth did this go?’
Emergency is subjective,
Nothing is allowed.
Excuses retro-fitted,
Everything is permitted
Smashed masterpieces
In a museum of your blacker fleeces
Then when the wonder ceases -
The distillate of a single tear set into a ring
Couch surfer
Flat earther
Rain maker.
Fire walker.
There's nothing like the taste of the earth
When you didn't choose to taste it.
And there's nothing like a wasted life
When you didn't choose to waste it.
The sea blending seamlessly into the sky -
Isn’t that how we’d all like to die?
Maybe that’s what they say
Where you come from.
But me, I wanna go off like a bomb
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13. |
Sky Tourism
02:38
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Sky Tourism
Under thick desert sands picked up by Ophelia
Innocent until proven alive
If you had a heart it’s with that that I’d steal you.
Scared if you chased your dreams you might thrive
And what kind of monster would turn their back on failure?
'Become a proud galleon, and the devil might sail you.’ -
Scared that we’d soar if we leapt off the plank
Fired like a thunderbolt into the sky split with guilt as Ophelia sank
The storm lifted all the sand from the desert
We could see the bare car park beneath
The glazed mosaics of a thousand mistakes
Stripped of lips to shield the teeth.
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14. |
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Everything At Once, Forever
A sea of bloody kisses and some near-bloody misses,
Well, I think therefore I am the thought that counts.
If the eye could see all that the heart sees
You'd know this machine kills Nazis.
Isn't that what this is all about?
I took a suite of rooms in the Paris catacombs,
All the dead poets queued for love and luck.
On the cold marble bed Leonard Cohen gave me head
As the angel of death made a noise like a rubber duck.
Mendacious man-made miracles
Mundane and mired in manacles
Like all us mad, mute oracles
In stupid, sinking coracles.
Forgive me or encourage me -
Full speed endlessly.
Everything at once FOREVER.
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15. |
Cloud Prayer
04:48
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Cloud Prayer
Thin skies of only cloud
Break upon the waves.
Wet cheeks and tattered shrouds
For all the love we gave.
Thin skies and tired eyes.
Aching backs and muddy knees.
Bladderwrack and stony trees,
How heavy hangs the air.
Tired eyes and empty hands
Break upon the shore.
Grey flies on hollow land
Waking, and what for?
Tired eyes and ruddy palms
Soften as they enter calm
In gentle arms that
Soothe and balm and
Genuinely care.
Landslides, razor clams.
Thorny gorse on skin.
Low tides, stillborn lambs,
Buried deep within.
Thin skies of only cloud
Break apart when
Tired hearts are
Treated kindly,
Come and find me,
Love exists to share.
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Nick Hudson Tbilisi, Georgia
Nick Hudson is a UK-born, Tbilisi-based composer/artist/image-maker/activist..
In April 2021
Nick released his first solo album in five years - Font Of Human Fractures - to glowing reviews from The Quietus and Libération.
"There isn’t really anyone making music like Nick Hudson” - The Quietus
“Genius” - BBC Introducing
“Scott Walker channeling Coil” - Mojo
www.theacademyofsun.com
... more
Nick Hudson recommends:
Stunning, visionary landscapes.
go to album
Colour Phase
by Claw The Thin Ice
Hyper-melodic and very moving.
go to album
Gaslight Illuminations
by Oli Spleen
Peerless balladry and stunning arrangements.
go to albumIf you like The Quiet Earth, you may also like:
Black Feather Under Your Tongue
by Toby Driver and Nick Hudson
supported by 15 fans who also own “The Quiet Earth”
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Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike
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supported by 14 fans who also own “The Quiet Earth”
Bought this one without listening. Was expecting a cybergrind outfit. Confused. Not disappointed.
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Before The Day Has Gone
by Bellini
Ten years may have passed since the last Bellini record, but the math rock group sound as fierce as ever.
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