enoweb |
lyrics: Nerve Net : |
FRACTAL ZOOM
Slow
there
reply
toil
no need to go on
do I need to go on?
Slow
lie
endure
recline
in a separate time
on a different plane
The "Small Country" Mix on the Maxi-CD Fractal Zoom single also includes the following words:
It's a small country: everyone's famous.
There are
hundreds of magazines about famous people.
"Marí Neuil Kaufman:
Pharmacien le Jour, Commedien la Nuit."
Famous chefs, famous gardeners,
famous toy boat enthusiasts, famous collectors of things: collectors of
bottles, cheeses, fish, tiles, fossils, bar mats, matches, pictures:
pictures of coffee bars, of racing cars, of shooting stars,
and
of women: big women, young women, oriental women, nude women, serious women,
women with green eyes, with hazel eyes, eyes behind glass.
Transcribed by Dan aka Mukamuk.
Alternative hearings:
in a separate time == In the circle (center?) of time (-- Jim Sullivan)
Bob Lowe hears:
Slow
there
reply
toil
no need to go on
do I need to
go on?
Slow
lie
endure
recline
in the center of time
on a
different plane
You'll flow,
You'll flow,
You'll flow...
WIRE SHOCK
Se doué a té doue Se doué a te doué
(?)
They live near the lake
They can't see the lake
They live near the
lake
And something is nothing
And something is nothing.
Akakakakakakaka
Akakakakakakaka
Se doué a té doue Se doué a te doué (?)
They live near the lake
I'll tell you, they had this beautiful
house
Nobody near (t)his house
Something is nothing
Something is
nothing.
Alternative hearings:
Nobody near (t)his house == Nobody near (t)his love
Something is nothing == Something is missing (-- Jim Sullivan)
Bob Lowe hears:
To the lip, they do lift
To the lip, they do lift
To the lip,
they do lift
To the lip, they do lift
They live near the lake
They can't see the lake
They live near
the lake
And summit is nonsense
Something is lost, yes
Something is lost, yes
To the lip,
To the lip,
To the lip,
To the lip
I'll tell you, they had this beautiful house
Walk into the mirrors
of smoke
As soon as the sun sets
Someone is lost, yes
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
I, uh, knew a man who once sent a letter to a mail channel that he'd raped his girlfriend and he's now a recovering rapist, attending an incest survivor's twelve step program. And the girlfriend, now ex, is in a support group for women who've been raped.
What actually happened?
"She was passed out asleep on the couch after we'd been drinking. I woke up in the middle of the night horny so I fucked her. She didn't wake up; I told her about it in the morning. She was furious! 'You raped me!' she said."
What actually happened?
What actually happened?
What actually
happened?
What actually happened?
Alternative Hearings:
I, uh, knew a man who once sent a letter to a mail channel that he'd raped his girlfriend == I am a man who'd once had an edit to a male genital (?) and he raped his girlfriend
I, uh, knew a man who once sent == Write up: The man reports that (-- Joseph V. Kelly)
MY SQUELCHY LIFE
My squelchy life
My squelchy life
My squelchy life
Waits around
corners
Nasty wife by sticky gap
My squelchy life
Follows in soft
shoes
It's catching up
My squelchy life
Stands there grinning
Big
white teeth, hairy white fingers (Anything, Anything)
I'll give it anything
to go away, anything
Anything, anything, anything, anything, anything,
anything.
My squelchy life
My squelchy life
My squelchy life
My
squelchy life
JUJU SPACE JAZZ
I'm the happiest man in all of the world
because I have something to
believe in
I have communion with the Son and the holy God and Creator
and in addition I have eternal life
Transcribed by Dan aka Mukamuk
THE ROIL, THE CHOKE
He raised the stake
And broke the soil
And phrased the
stroke
That takes the oil
And stoked, erased and foiled the lake
And
smoked and boiled the grazing snake
The roil, the choke, the cakes of
praise
The spoils that break now cloak the days
That wake the coil of
blazing coke
The flaking glaze of Royalty broke
He raises, stakes,
admires, stokes
The flowery blaze, the fiery pokes
References:
There is one song which sticks in the mind when you hear Eno's new album. It is unlike anything he has done, and yet it is hard to think of anyone else who could have done it. It's called "The Roil, The Choke" and it starts with a gentle ping, perhaps a tuning fork. Then the rhythm snaps in, low and slow, clearly electronic, but also human, as if someone's heartbeat had been fed to a drum machine. On top are some more pings and pops, not adding up to a tune. Soon they are joined by a synthesiser: a shimmering wash of sound which moves achingly slowly through a couple of chords.
Now there's a second shimmer, warmer and brighter, and you know you are about to get some vocals. When they come they are spoken, slowly, calmly, with authority; the speaker could be a Harley Street doctor. He says:
"He raised the stake and broke the soil
And phrased the stroke that
takes the oil
And stoked, he raised and foiled the lake
And smoked and
boiled the grazing snake."
If you thought hard about these words, you might well decide they were gobbledegook and put something else on. But you don't; you hear them the way they were intended, as sounds first and signifiers second, so that you dwell not on what isn't there but on what is: the bright surprising pictures, the long Saxon monosyllables, the internal rhymes, the cool formality of the pattern, the way everything seems in place.
Straight after the verse comes the chorus, a sort of catchy plainsong:
"The roil, the choke, the cakes of praise
The spoils that break now
cloak the days
They wake the coil of blazing coke
The flaking gaze of
royalty broke
He praises, stakes, admires, stokes
The flowery blaze,
the fiery blokes."
That takes about 30 seconds. Then there is an instrumental break, which turns out to be the remainder of the piece. It builds slowly to a climax, with the shimmering synth joined first by an organ, which sounds squeezed, like something on a Parisian street-corner, and plays a one-finger tune, then a piano, sweeping and stately, then a third shimmer, a distant wave of wordless voices. As soon as all these elements are there, the music fades, swiftly, leaving an impression of elegiac beauty.
There comes a point in every conversation with Brian Eno when he reaches for pen and paper. This time the point came when I asked him about "The Roil, The Choke". I wondered if the words were a play on rap, a sly attempt to take something aggressive and Afro-American and make it sound as if it was invented in an English drawing-room. It wasn't.
"The sequence of the phonemes [the four sounds, -oke, -ake , -aze and -oil] is from bell-ringing. It's quite a simple permutation actually, it only uses four bells. I think it's called Bob Doubles. It goes ABCD, ACBD..." - and he writes A B C D, spaced out on one line, and draws lines down, to show how it goes on. And the words? "I just thought 'the cakes of praise' was a great idea, and took it from there. I like to write words that are on the border between meaning and nonsense, so you're not quite sure whether they mean anything or not."
(-- Tim de Lisle, Independent on Sunday, 2nd August 1992)
Q: "The Roil, The Choke," (off of Nerve Net) has a very majestic feel to it yet without resorting to any musical cliches that would depict majesty. Was that your aim?
Brian Eno: Yes, it didn't start out intending to be that way actually. but I think your analysis is right, it does feel sort of melancholy but expansive feeling to it. In fact that's achieved with the cheapest sounding instrument. Nearly all of these songs use the DX7. I'm the last surviving user of the DX7, I think. I'm probably the only person, well one of the only ten people, who learned to program it properly. So that very sort of fuzzy organ sound in the beginning is the DX7 sound, but it's an evocative sound, something one doesn't quite know what its evoking. It sounds like one of those old organs of the '50s, but they never sounded like this actually. They never sounded that fuzzy. It sort of evokes something that never really existed. It's a very blissful dizzy sound for me. I like it very much.
(-- joabj, unpublished interview, 1992)
Alternative hearings:
He raised the stake == You raised the stake (-- SDRS)
That wake the coil of blazing coke == That wake the coil of blazing coke (-- Jim Sullivan)
He raises, stakes, admires, stokes == He praises stakes, admires stokes (-- Dan aka Mukamuk) == He praises snakes, admires stoats (-- Jeffrey J. Wagg)
the fiery pokes == the fire evokes (-- SDRS) == the fiery hoax (-- Dan aka Mukamuk & Jim Sullivan)
The flowery blaze == The floury blaze
ALI CLICK
Jolly Roger in a pickup
Has a packet on the horses
He's a docker
with a bucket -
Just the ticket in a thicket.
Silly Sally isn't pally
With the crackers in the alley:
She's a
smacker and a whacker -
Wouldn't dally with a slacker.
Sally keeping in her locker
Little packets for the docker Jolly
Roger
(Looking pretty, just the sucker for a shocker)
Jolly Roger in a pickup
Has a packet on the horses
He's a docker
with a bucket -
Just the ticket in a thicket.
The Maxi-CD Ali Click single has versions which also include
these words:
Brian's mood is gradually changing. He orders all his friends into another room, closes the door, he sits alone on the wooden floor, visible only by the dim light shining from the bathroom. He talks to himself.
Brian's been amusing his friends by chewing on some plastic flash-bulbs.
References:
The extra lyrics on the Maxi CD of Ali Click are not original. They are on a track by a synth group/artist called "Porcupine Tree". The track is called something like "Journey" or "Passage". I got it mail order a few years ago. -- James Bartlett
Actually Brian's 'Ali Click' pre-dates by a number of months the Porcupine Tree track which is in fact titled 'Voyage 34'. Both sample an old LP recording of someone recounting an LSD trip by "Brian". Info on the Porcupine Tree track can be found at www.porcupinetree.com. PT are also not a "synth" group. They started as heavily influenced by Pink Floyd et al but have now evolved into a more pop version of that. Main man Steven Wilson is also a talented producer. -- Craig Peacock
THANKS TO:
Dan
aka Mukamuk, Craig Clark, Jay Sachs, Phil Gyford, SDRS and the nameless
denizens of the alt.music.brian-eno newsgroup who worked together in 1995 to
create the transcriptions on which the EnoWeb's lyrics pages are based.