The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

drug saw cow boy

with all the crimson yellow in my head

i beseech thee lord thy golden staff

which doth glow in dream some say out of shot

t’is the quickening of the bursting evening afoot

the crackles of black upon black the clock will stop

a thousand faces swim upon the blank visage of woman

woman as tiger woman as hunter woman as healer

woman as hag

woman as mother as child as teacher

as white female centaur moving into lime

come we drown in feminine cosmos

a chorus of women all mourning for me

bring on the doctor bring on the lawyer

bring on the curtain and bring on my fee

the ocelot springs in a frozen assumption

his claws retract in the middle of flight

where is the engine that pumps out delusion

who is in charge of the chaos inside

how can you understand everything

when nothing is more important than light

and light as you are you fall away fast

picking up speed beyond point in time

how molecules dance when once but disturbed

the smaller you go the faster you whirl

some voices are singing a bright lively song

a mirror of birds

a feast of blue notes

a study of nebulous shapes in a sky

a space full of planet revolve around star

god in his wisdom has painted his portrait

in sea and in weather and in fire and steel

we have entered a sound  where colours reversed

overexposed  violins to pure flash

and th’elegies of summers long dead and dying

they linger in synthesis

they dodder in glow

they hang in the air upon heavens rafters

adrift in a wildness alone in a world

i land on the dock with my winged heels oblivion

i surface a dream that has struggle asleep

many the meadow fog dimmed in morning

where raven and quarrel purveying their wares

malignant gnome who breeds in the graveyard

the horrible sprite of an unhappy bride

away from this plane i hasten a’flame

for am i not  son of the spritual spark

i track lonely black oceans as my soul looms on homeward

i gaze at the monsters concealed there within

a dragon of gold with teeth of pure pearl

a lion of marble with jaw inlaid jewel

a beaten statue of baal yonder master

behold at your peril gaze if you will

the summer has left me gasping for springtime

the morning just keeps begging for night

the night has gone within some life

then suddenly

its alright!

feel line kill bee

i search myself and i find myself wanting

wanting more of this wanting less of that

the sun spent last night shining brightly somewhere else

but laziness and i are in cahoots

tragedies rip chunks from a dwelling

great unasked for honours prop up tottering beams

daughter aurora whom i named in song 9 years before birth

she of all my children

with her olive hued skin

her hair the colour of shifting sand

her eyes are old navaho woman

her mind from a former time

the present confuses and bemuses her

she cant quite remember her great gift and…….

an affinity for magic and myth

she fills up on it and then cannot abide her real worlds

feeling persecuted by unnameable forces

sometimes her disdain comes back and bites her

is she a celt is she an indian is she a persian is she a moor ?

her vaunted intelligence makes everything vapid

a fish out of water

a girl out of time

a fruit on a vine

but the same old zeitgeist the one who keeps changing

the spirit is attractive

its hard to ignore him

after all we all must live in our times

why yearn towards the past realms of magic 

when ive one million tricks up one million sleeves ?

and quick as a flash i’m trotting out novelties 

and gossips and weddings and gadgets and clothes

the never ending present is a great fatigue

to those who long for future and past

i took my longing and made it the subject

for almost every song that i ever will write

its a thrill that aches its like a warm chill

youve seen paradise and here is your bill

i guess that last line means i got too much time to kill

i admire that quiet man with his house on the hill

his garden so lush his window so still

i didnt think about it until……

a poem has tried to high jack my reverie

the things that i right here in strictly no confidence

i am your internet conscience as the nights go a’sliding

i am revealed gradually as the years go on hiding

man time is rushing like never before

reversing all that you hate and adore

you all love me once and love me no more

the wind sings a symphony i ask whats the score

in tatters the battered fish on the shore

my close from last night that lay on the floor

and drugs coursing through all of the veins at full bore

look i’m lifting off  now …what you standing there for…..?

i only want more and i only want more…..

reality convenes an intervention

one day you come home

and there sit all your fears anxieties and doubts

reality has decided you must play it straight

reality wants to be embraced

your fears need assuaging

your anxieties need soothing

your doubts need reassurance

reality suggests somewhere between everything else

reality lies a way

if you create your own reality…..

why only a devil would then create this hell

and what kind of god would design sweet eden

and kick out his angel

who loved it so well

god  flooded the world to wash away sin

devil flooded hell with his tears to begin

man is lost without and lost within

god with his mane

devil with his fin

god with his spear

devil with his pin

god with his out

devil with his in

god with his law

devil with his spin

god with his methadone

devil with his heroin

god with his platinum

devil with his tin

i say all of this

i love you in spades

sincerely sincerely

off now to hades

a rent in reality + ocean glimpsed

11 11 11

the day ww1 finished in 1918

still im not exactly sure why it had to be

i dont understand what that war was for

sure archduke ferdinand got hit

but this was slaughter on an undreamt of scale

the most pointless useless bloody heartbreaking war of all

theyre still digging guys up who were churned into the mud

bits n pieces of 19 year old germans n french n english n americans

why? for fucks sake why?

why do we trust em?

why did we ever trust em?

the same guys bankrolling both sides too

i’d say thats somewhat immoral on a cosmic scale

anyway

well we sure got us some young soldiers killed

what incredible reason necessitated this butchery of young men?

the same old arrogant crowd who dont fight in the wars themselves

its a wonder …..did they have any consciences at all?

the generals and lords and kaisers and admirals

ww1 is an atrocity against ourselves

but who can even begin to say why?

the common man trusted that someone must know why

werent the enemy evil?

didnt we owe em one from napoleonic days?

no wait a minute…

has every fucking country in europe had a war with each other?

britain has been invaded by italy by germany by denmark by france

plus it has fought with holland spain portugal russia india arabia

man theres so much bad blood everywhere who can untangle it?

and a steady stream of villainy deprivation ignorance and war

wars all over the place some lasting a century

we will never learn tho will we

if ww1 doesnt make humanity learn what fucking well will?

the germans n english are mates now so are the frenchies

why did all the people have to die to achieve this?

if you think war is any fun

go to the war memorial in canberra

walk down the ww1 wing and you can still get a whiff of the trenches

even behind glass the uniforms of dead men give off that faint stench

the war happened and some people made a lot of money out of it

it was good for business and its a bit of a shame about all the carnage

the great war

a war to end all wars they said …

but theyre still coming atcha with new ones

dont ask me

im just a singer

a thought struck me

i make my music for a me who isnt me

i imagine some brutal critical ruthless critic

in fact i am him

i guess you know i  rant on about  the music i cant stand

its like i’m in this tiny niche market and all the rest drives me crazy

i find and have always found most music unlistenable

that is , theres the stuff i love and verily i doth love it in spades

and theres the rest ….its pointless for me to listen to it…

there are  mysterious qualities one must have or acquire

a ha this is the bit no one can really manipulate

i was born the vessel of a potential songwriter

i had a few certain things in my favour

my dad playing the piano

my mum interested in words

i have the dogged persistence of an idiot/savant

i am an encyclopaedia on rocknroll make no mistake

my brain is crammed with millions of pictures songs and triviae

this is my phd

this is my longs life work

i have only just realised i had a lifes work

i mean i wasnt planning to be me as i am now

once i was a very shy unsure sulky little twit

but (just like my mother)

as i hit my fifties i guess the sheer gravity of all those years…..

i improved a bit

not so frosty and all that

anyway here i am

it seemed i had a small vocation after all

i have made some very elite rock music

some of my stuff is not for everybody

you gotta be interested in subtlety and ambiguity …all that carryon

taking my cue from strawberry fields i hope to conjure dislocation

with my music and my words and my voice and my trip

but what the fuck is my trip…….?

my trip is some fine line between song and suggestion

my trip is reincarnation

my trip is drug dream and all other states of minds

my trip is 1960s heavy but i have tried to distil the quintessence

i want to open that door in your head you need to go

my songs are shifting as you approach

they often give up their secrets and beauty later

the words can be daunting for some types of people (philistines)

the music is idiosyncratic and is a synthesis of everything i love

as a painter i just started one day

you cant call picasso or van go go my influences

i dont have any painting influences

but my music is such a blend of things

oh yes the beatles of course the original and best

but everything i heard went into my deconstructive process

i analysed rock songs every song i heard

i broke it down into its successes and failures

how were these accomplished ….

the whole damn thing

i was figuring it out

meanwhile i did little else

at school i was a clown and a pest

i wasnt much of a friend or boyfriend either

i was preoccupied you see my rocknroll

in canberra i had a guy at an import record shop ring me

as each consignment came in

I USED TO BUY

EVERY VAGUELY INTERESTING LOOKING RECORD!!

i ended buying loads n loads of rubbish

stuff i just could nae abide

but i got some good stuff too

stuff like metro for example

in guitar terms a huge influence on me/us

my head was full of rock figures facts riffs myths

i knew i had the ability to manipulate the elements

i believe i understood the deep deep beauty of this music

so much fucking awful pathetic rubbish but every now n then……

aaaaah….someone writes a good vibrations or love will tear us apart

or someone like iggy would make a raw power which was incandescent

or the stones would  up the  swagger and sleaze

neil young ….harvest…..such fragility …. a delicate thing

genesis had some astounding music and words

yes it was art

i liked the sex pistols but no other punk bands that much

i always appreciated it when someone pushed an envelope somewhere

be rawer be faster be slower be nastier be nicer be louder be softer

be something no one else has done

take it further in your direction than they thought possible

look at nirvana : an explosion of iconic and iconoclastic stuff

any way accidentally ive ended up playing to a discerning crowd

they want rock but they dont know why rock is supposed to be dumb

dumb as in ac/dc for example

if that schtick isnt dumb….

….the geezer in the hat bawling out that malarkey ..?

you see this is one of rocks great wonders and its weaknesses

rock tolerates heavy handed” dumbness” pretty easily

some silly old geezer every song sounds like every other

some rocknroll platitudes about rocknroll itself…real cliches..jesus..

rock also tends to reward great commercial success

with a total dismantling of any honesty or distance

if youre successful that is the main thing

it seems people stop noticing the sillinesses anymore

maybe you love ac/dc but to me its literally painful

its not even funny (beyond a limited benny hill nudge nudge)

bon scott was enough of a maverick rascal to pull it off

but with that geezer in the hat its just bloody stupid to me

an audience of teen boys

singing and gesticulating along to them is saddening

for christs sake we are the heirs of incredible art

the iliad and the tempest

we must strive

the beatles and stones were striving

dylans striving

bowie n bolan too striving on n off

and all the others

the byrds

big star

paul simon

bruce springsteen

julian cope

all those NZ bands

the go betweens the triffids the underground lovers

striving

patti smith television

leonard cohen yes and nick cave

greg dulli led zep pink floyd

they strive on n off

that is where the line between music and magic blurs

a guy with a guitar and 3 chords and some random words

it can bewitch or fascinate you or repel you forever

i love my type of rock so much

it is a pantheon that fits  hawkwind and lou reed and whoever i like

theres the contenders n theres the schlock

in the sixties n seventies n eighties n the nineties n now : schlock

and good stuff always too

the contenders always someone gonna cook up something good

i dont know

i’m usually wrong about the most ordinary things

i love some music vehemently

i hate some music dearly

i am an odd conglomerate of music myself

yes i loved every bread single

there was a beauty in there worthwhile of analysis

i’m not a punter n i never was

i was an obsessed rock fan crossed with a computer like brain

a brain which processed innumerable data and then interpreted it

and stored it

i took my whole from a million bits and pieces even i dont know

blustering bawling macho tripe

its like green kryptonite to me

at one end of rocks catalogue of horror is the boyband fairy floss

at the other the meatnpotatoes of heavy metal n nickelback n whoever

the angry yelling excitable types draining all your energy

you plot your course aided equally by that which attracts

by that which repels

i do this music now its pretty much my own

all the 5000 songs i love and hate fight it out in my head

its just the way i’m made

its the way that i do things

the need to worship and disdain i suppose

the SHP doesnt help me here

understand the madman and genius and average geezer coexist

in us all to varying degrees

some us got a bit more of the first two

its the way things have to be

it takes troubled tormented artists sometimes

it takes ordinary geezers who must count their blessings

it takes good guys n villains and fakes frauds and fairies

so i have partitioned off my little demi-acre here

here in this imaginary landscape of rock

where nothing is really good or bad

its all a point of view

the real question is :

why wont one of those glossy music mags in england

ever write about us for years n years….?

too dangerous to keep

they say never work with animals or children

today went out to the zoo to promote an upcoming show

i got to meet some critters and i got to handle the snakey

ooh it feels kinda weird all these independent muscles flexing

heavier and not at all cold or slimy as youd imagine

still ……

i never signed up for this, did i?

did i….?

i did……..?!!!

ok

carry on

the 57 year old child

i believe in music

indeed music can do something nothing else can do

even what that is…is a mystery in itself

even to people like me who make it and play it it is mysterious

music and music only can express such sublime ineffabilities

the best music seems divinely inspired

music is very very important to us :

to those of us that love it

it is much more than entertainment

i have always expected magic from my music

i always try to put some into my own

its hard to tell though

after all which magician can do his magic on himself……

music slowly reveals her secrets to me one at a time

a new idea occurs to me and i take it into consideration

i realise i have many rigid rules that i seem to follow unquestioningly

each idea must be examined

each parameter must be tested

tempo

length

the tuning

time signature

key

every instrument  and its interaction with the others

simplicity

complexity

the intent

the performance

the recording

the sound

the emphasis

the melody

the harmony

the lines

the riffs

the backgrounds

the solos

the effects

the mixing

etc etc

with so many variations music can never be exhausted

no : all the good songs have not yet been written!

in the total bedrock of all possible song we have excavated one inch

there are new worlds yet undiscovered and abounding forever

there will always be new beautiful forms as yet undreamt of

having taken another incarnation in the 1950s

i grew up with rocknroll

it is my natural milieu

it has many uglinesses

it contains many wondrous beauties too

i used to say rocknroll is a cartoon medium

yet i now recant this opinion

the glorious peaks of rock are as high as any other

i dont understand ballet and opera and classical

but i sure know

that it cant get you much higher than strawberry fields forever…right?

and herein lies the true wonder of rock

the ability to express vague fleeting incredible ambiguities

strawberry fields forever…you think thats not as good as the mona lisa?

you think bach or someone used an orchestra as  weirdly?

you think wordsworth or someone had a better handle on english than john?

i bless the muses and my own muse that i was a child to witness it

can you imagine this?

strawberry fields forever

its everything at once

first of all its massively popular

then its almost totally unique

i mean who else had written such a song?

its out of the blue genius

in a single stroke of detached vision

john and george martin and the other beatles

they cooked up this four minute bit of art

redefining everything that rock or pop could be

and here our music becomes serious art

you know that can sometimes accidentally happen

you start out four moptops singing about teenage love

and through some rapid metamorphoses evolve into

some kind of aural dali

complete with melting feelings and bizarre juxtaposition

strawberry fields forever showed what was possible

i mean the beatles were moving in this direction a bit

but who could have expected this …..this exquisite song?

in this one song i would rest my case

and argue it out with whoever you got

show me something out there

a film a dance a poem a sculpture a painting a symphony

show me something thats both a popular commercial item

and a distant essay on isolation

and some sadness that can never be named

and every instrument collaborating in this dislocation

sure any idiot can dislocate you with a racket

any turkey with a weedblower can do that….

but to dislocate so dreamily so gently so warped and wonderful

to me this song is as high an art as any art ive seen

its an untouchable masterpiece

it remains unsurpassed and probably unsurpassable

at this point rocknroll turned into real art

real proper hang it in the museum stuff

alongside all the other geniuses

for me this was a new beginning

i hate ugly music

i abhor ugly sounds

i disdain dissonance

it is indeed easy to make a horrible ugly racket

just like its easy to do a horrible ugly painting

or make a horrible ugly dinner

or insert your own horrible ugliness here

as i get older and older

the horrible bloody rackets get harder and harder to take

i hate morbid stupid violent entropic deliberately ugly art

no hang on a minute

yes i get the point

yes i have done time with my own rackets

not because of tradition but because of experience

i avoid noise in music

a little bit of noise and ugliness never goes astray

but its like pepper or spices and you mustnt overdo it

the prospect of a bunch of middle aged white guys

bellowing out their impotent angers over a metallic racket

well it doth fill me with entropic inertia

rock should never be the same song after song

this great lesson we should have learned from the fab four

a record of angry ugliness or a night of ugly angriness is too much

its like a play which is all violence and nothing else

or a painting which is a pitch black giving way to nothing

the beatles constantly experiment

recombining old forms and new techniques

they are the ideal

they are rocks holy quadrinity

you see they were both esoteric and exoteric

they included everyone into their strange worlds

the beauty seduced you

before you knew it you could be in the unfamiliar

i demand some diversity therefore

and a bloody horrible racket by a rock band is anathema to me

i dont care if it supposedly has humour or irony or self-depracation

(though i sincerely doubt it does)

endless stuff about death and decay and disease and misery

accompanied by tuneless noise

it seems thats art out of balance

for are we not surrounded by these very things?

surely then the musician within whichever field he  jams

has a duty to capture only the sublimest emotions

the ones which heal and refresh and make one wonder

the ones which bring sex and love and heaven and earth

it doesnt make sense to me to listen to ugly stuff

youre indoctrinating yourself

youre uglifying your mind and it might be hard to get it out again

i can understand youthful musicians making rackets

it is understandable like youthful painters painting a mess

i guess the rock racket could be likened to an abstract painting

some abstracts are things of beauty while others are not

sometimes the rock racket contains beauty

heroin by the velvet underground

some neil young stuff

it exists

dont waste your time trying to find the artiness in a racket tho

theres always a construction site near you somewhere

go and interpret that….!

i myself am pleased where my music is going

my recorded works at any rate

i keep improving as a singer thats good

i couldnt have got any worse than when i started

i was not a natural singer

i kinda started to figure it out as i went along

i hate my singing on that first church record

its mannered its stiff its flat its pretentious

its so fucking pretentious its a joke

i was pretending not to be me

it wasnt really until heyday a real me emerged

all that singing on heyday was me

all the harmonies and back ups

(bar the choir on already yesterday and on youth w.)

peter walsh made me do it

he thought of most of the harmonies

my mind is strangely limited when it comes to harmonies

they never come that easily to me and theyre hard to sing

but suddenly there on heyday i emerge as a bit of a vocalist

i like myrrh from heyday the first track

i wish every one of my tracks was as good as this

it had everything i like in rock

it had a real sense of travel

it was about everything at once in a way

that song may be approaching art a little

the hex albums have some real art

so too jack frost

priest and narcosis

forget yourself

u23

theres not much art on GAF tho

pop music but not much art

real art requires a lot of effort and will

sometimes you even have to fight for your right to  be arty

by the time the fights over you aint got the energy to be arty

eg kilbey in a studio with an engineer sometime in the eighties

me : please can we put some effects on the backing vocal now

him : it can be dry for the moment

me : no, i said can we have some reverb…or something..

him : not now because of blah blah blah

me : look i really wanna hear some reverb on it

him : reverb wont fix it if its outta tune…

me : I WANT SOME FUCKING REVERB!!!!!!

him : ok, fuck, jesus ok….now what kind of reverb..

me : uh….? what…?…oh i ….never mind ..get on with it

him : no i’m gonna give ya some fuckin’ reverb steve …

me : fuck the reverb and get on with it …

him : you dont know what you want do ya…?

me : uh yeah um no i dont do i……

a stalemate

i take the challenge of reconciling old age and rocknroll seriously

the grandmaster painters painted on till they dropped

so too the jazz and bluesmen

what goes wrong in rock?

theyre are notable exceptions of people who keep their edge

or their esteem or the demeanour or whatever it is

we should not expect less from the old rocker

we should expect more

we should expect more beauty i guess in a nutshell

like a jeweller of 57

or an architect of 57

or a brain surgeon of 57

you should be pretty good by now

since 1970 you’d usually find me in bedroom studying music

or in a garage or hall rehearsing or jamming with guys

or sitting on my bed trying to force out songs i knew were within me

but nonetheless would not come without much more experience

ive lugged the gear

ive done the drives

ive been at airports on new years eve

the glory and the disappointment

always playing playing playing

listening analysing incorporating

surely then i must improve

surely then i must have improved

or at least continued at the same rate

with obvious ups and downs included

isidore life somewhere else is a real treat

it has wonder and beauty

it does have some ugly heavy handed moments

caliban comes on stage and says his lines

the beastly is represented here as well as the angelic

jeffrey samples myriad guitar phrases and everything precise

yet always jeffreys beatlesque turn of chords

a composer like caino has little need of dissonance

(tho i warn you it exists on this record!)

if you could pull endlessly beautiful things out of thin air

why would you ever wanna do ugly more than occasionally

you wouldnt would you….?

cainos music is sophisticated modern

and yet with a traditional aesthetic

its perfect for me to sing over

sometimes it takes me a while to figure it out

jeffreys music slips into fluxes inexplicably to me

at first until i understand his more fluid structures

i listen to each piece and the music write the words

i’m looking forward to its release

oh alabama can i see you and shake your hand

today i skyped cain-o in birmingham

and guess what..?

in his hand he brandished the isidore cd

life somewhere else

its ready and soon he will be posting all good SKPers their copy

caino ever the perfectionist wants the SKP people to have the physical copy

on account of the lovely packaging and stuff

the album itself meanders wildly through different styles

theres some weird long noisy things

theres some short extremely poppy things

theres all the clever and brilliant stuff youd expect from us

sad and exciting and melodic and densely populated music

caino must have been on some strange trip to dream this music up

i have merely responded with all the semantic hyper priming carryon  i do

raw guitars battle it out with elaborate mellotron arrangements

a progression and digression from the first album

its quite a record …..you wait till you hear it

caino guarantees the SKPers will be the first people on earth to hear it

wow thats kinda cool aint it?

meanwhile today we sent out the egyptian  registers

and guess what i forgot to put someones little sk artwork in there

(luckily perry from florida got 2 !)

would that person missing theirs contact us when it doesnt arrive …?

i’ll sort you out properly

soon the time being shop will be up and running

remember of course SKPers get a 25 % discount on everything

and soon an SKP only area with some real rarities ……

anyway thats about it

see ya soon you ninnies!

sk

without a world between them

impotent ham with wand of ash stood on cliff

and the onrushing sky crashed on the rocks below

and the ocean heaving itself upon the land like a beast

delusional wizard summons the tempest in latin and algebra

in forbidden languages normally unspoken under starburn

oh yes and see the weather listens to him so far away

a black dread hath filled the galleons sail

and smoke and cloud seem to mingle in tingling darknesses

and the first huge fat warm raindrop hits his daughters head like a tear

and the good elemental appears within invisibility

lightning bolt arcs towards the vomiting sea

a sickening white flash burns eye and the screaming of men

the sea is the colour of the coldest metal and its spume is bright green

the timbers are wrecked and hear us all groan as we are pulled down

its then i see i am coming from all perspectives

this is possible in poem only you see i am all players

the seawater is boiling cold inside my hoarse head

the exertion of my last great trick hath exhausted me

my daughter each in a tower of their own making

i wander in the woods i have tamed in my exile

i am the slinking thing the bad elemental

i am the lost and innocent sailor

i am the heartless and usurping brother

i am the hopeful son amidst all this wreckage

i am the leaves on the windlashed trees

and i am the salt that whirls through the air

in every flower and creature i see myself lurking

in every creek and lagoon

oh a wild grey day has come down on my island inside

where i star as myself  and it is written

cheats never prospero

and it is said that lightning is clean and faster than light

and that evil can be cleansed and washed from our hands

good and evil both work for me

but time still enslaves you and whips me ahead

the magic i do is but sleight of mind

and everything here an aspect of me

even the ending where all is made new

invitation to begin again

SK*sk*sk*SK

in the dappled light of winged genius

at the threshhold of divine tombs

we ask but how can gods themselves die ?

we call into the darkness of humanity

we search each others universe for signs of a faintest life……

come on the time being will lead the way !

we thrash that way and this

djungle of words rapped around my calves

something has lured us into a long entropy

we sail overhead embezzled by the stars themselves

baby we will explode in  one million pieces over peru

i have separated within my own skin in spades

i lay down my suits solemnly i know god watches what i do

my mind my ally my mind my traitor

my mouth is a liar when it smiles like galilee

my angular ocean

scarlet says daddy i want to walk on that water

even in a poem i smile sadly

to see her disappear over the horizon

my spirit fled to some warm extinguishment

my soul roasted clean in some freezing fire

my futures dealt out into the hands of the players

the journey has barely begun and it seems we have arrived

an elaborate interweaving network of impossible coincidenci

an imitation of some great titans intent

my words are either meaningless or hold a huge important truth

only in this world could both conditions be said to be fulfilled

i have pulled an endless array of things from head

can it be a dismal emptiness now envelopes me…?

i have excavated right through to my last life

i thump on the walls of this cell for the past to hear

who am i and who have i been……?

my velvet voice returns a mockery of itself

my magic flares up in my  basalt face

and scorches my alabaster hands

half on half off

half man half beast

half creature half angel

in one hand nothing

in the other everything

in the other everything is exactly nothing

and poetry and mathematics and art and love

are ambiguous plates we juggle till they smash

i wield this tiny painful power

i would rather have a great fortune and be stupid

i would rather drift in my ice blue pool with the iq of a moth

i would rather sleep in my deep bed dumb as any river

i would rather live on my enchanted isle off italys lovely coast

i am content with great riches and the crushed beauties thereabouts

i am ready for castles cognac and the adriatic sun brings morphine morning

inure me to philosophy and the search for meaning in a meaningless world

give me bottomless goblets of the sweetest nepenthe

i am like a beggar about to turn into odysseus himself

i bequeath winter to my friends in absentia delicto

i leave my nebulous gifts to  buffoons  and sad lovers

i direct my affairs from beyond and off sure

life is as i always suspected a lethal necrotic business

dog eat dog eat man eat world eat moon eat stars

why do you care what i say….i’m just a punter like thyself

white hippy moses in the vale of tears in the shadow of death

get across it!

gilding the lilith

i have chanced upon a limited number of egyptian register

it was the second album by gilt trip

which was russell kilbey and me

on ER michael hanlon joined us

this is weird wild esoteric music

music from other times from other places from other worlds

its instrumental music electronic music organic music

sad trumpets blow through storms of artificial strings

creatures howl and birds squawk

clocks tick tock tick tock tick tock

jungles close in

austere towers perched on windswept rocks

a busy marketplace saturated in colour n contrast

smoky nightclubs in some erotic purgatory

alien strippers doff their g strings revealing black holes

rain hits windows in strange libraries

things moan in close distances

beautiful visions corrupt and distort and breakdown

children turn into memories before their own eyes

this is the egyptian registers music then

a turbulent chaotic melange

a jumble of styles constantly in flux

this music is dragged from lives unknown unled even oddly

you want panache in spades with soy cream on top..here it is

not essential but quintessentially weird

exploring swampy dreamy sun drenched parts of the mind

lemuria is here so is lyonesse

egyptian register is for magicians and mad women

egyptian register is for archaeologists and arch angels

egyptian register is the sound of tomorrow which never came

strange? fuck yeah…you wont hear it on the radio anytime soon

but slip on the headphones and visit a rich mental garden

the repulsive throb of reptilian wings

the scream of flesh set into machinery

a brothel in my head populated by female me

my past lives are here laid out unambiguously in glyphs

yes i imagine music from all ages played on electric guitar

this music sounds real good on drugs…real good….

egyptian register more esoteric than madame blavatskys hash pipe

more eldritch than an ectoplasmic tv

egyptian register is strange music for strange people

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ok heres the deal if you want one

$ 20 plus postage

SKPers get 25 % discount ie $15 plus postage

each copy signed and including a tiny original sk lithograph

thank you

youre very nice