1. |
Boogeyman
04:57
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I sink slowly into tarmac, dark black ocean
Hoping that these lights approaching
Don't come close enough to open up my tired eyes
It's brighter when they’re closed
I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman
The sky made of diamonds, the wealth made us giants
The cash cow leather on the belt of Orion
The fates wove our defiance
The prophets sold hope to the fangs of desire
We are the children of the Nile
The wild crocodiles taming grass with the scythe
Sometimes you’ve got to eat a child
The river we’re delivered in is crimson at the mouth with the blight
We’re born too late in the fight
Some are dark underwater, but my skies stay bright and clear
That’s just the price of doing business
I fly high, I don’t cry for wingless, dear
Why miss heaven by inches?
Smoke a rainforest like a blunt, stay ignant
Mix that petroleum with gin ‘fore you throw it back
Serve it over glacial ice, the ship’s sinking
I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman
The sky so vast that I can’t see the edge
The lie so smooth that it felt like breath
The wound so deep that it felt like flesh
We take it as a given ‘til it felt like sense
Safe to assume that we’re already dead
So, it’s back to the everyday stress
Back to the bills and the tax and the rent
Back to the strangers that felt like friends
Back to the illness the pills and the pens
Back to the onslaught of thoughts in my head
I read the receipts of the time I’ve spent
I’m in debt, so I withdraw every second that I have left
And even if I was sure it’s the end
By now, I’m too numb to care so it depends
Does your Boogeyman only hunt those with regrets?
I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman
I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman
I’m not afraid
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2. |
Waste
05:03
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I’ve been stripped to the waste
I’ve been lost in the race
I’ve been caught in the chase
I’ve been quick to erase
Floodwater waist, floodwater, floodwater (Yeah)
I'm sitting in a car somewhere the road doesn't matter
Scattered are the droplets on the window, that have gathered
It's lathered in a condescending condensation
Coalescing contemplation is a sadder scheme
Yeah, a sigh sinks its teeth into the shroud of liquid steam
Flattened fog is hiding green, screaming stagnant meaning
As I ponder through the scene, from the back seat
Yeah, I'm moving ever forward whilst imprisoned in this chrysalis
The coldest caterpillar revealing feelings of dissonance
At the end I'll sleep, no longer shaken by the vehicle that has stolen my dreams
It seems I'm woken by the turbulence of cracks in the road
And I’ve been coping by ignoring what my guts already know
With eyes closed, I force my perspective to soften
Divorced from the cause, I won’t wed the problem
A passenger, only passing through
I’m at an impasse, so I pass it to you
Yeah, I’m a passenger, only passing through
I’m at an impasse, so I pass it to you
I’ve been stripped to the waste
I’ve been lost in the race
I’ve been caught in the chase
I’ve been quick to erase
Floodwater waist high, I waste time
Trying to escape time, the days die
And I’m anxious, double down just to feel anchored
I drill through the core like a cancer
I am crude oil burning, I am crude oil burning
I accrue this debt, and the world keeps turning
I am the bodies in the abattoir, I am the bodies in the abattoir
When I craved that marrow of convenience
I was sucking on the bone like a rabid dog
Vision is a mirror, and this weather won't define me
In passing time, clouds resign to give the sun it's due
So too this day will pass me, I'll drift happily
But right now, this moment is reality
I’m moving ever forward whilst imprisoned in this chrysalis
The coldest caterpillar revealing feelings of distance
I’m determined to exist here
I kiss goodbye to the thought of non-acceptance
I listen to the wisdom in the stomach and intestines
I let my lungs fill with the flames of intention
And then I exhale that wasteful resentment
I don’t know if the storm will end
But this moment, and this car are neither enemy nor friend
The droplets running west on a car that’s speeding east
Know not their own direction, know not the nature of the beast
I’ve been stripped to the waste
I’ve been lost in the race
I’ve been caught in the chase
I’ve been quick to erase
Floodwater waist high, I waste time
Trying to escape time, the days die
And I’m anxious, double down just to feel anchored
I drill through the core like a cancer (quick to erase)
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3. |
Away
05:15
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It’s brighter when my eyes are open
My grandfather's first kiss
My grandmother's first sip of brandy
The first African trafficked to the Americas
The first rice grain cultivated in Sahel
The release of Nas' first album
The first execution sanctioned by the first emperor of Mali
The first hieroglyph carved into sandstone
The first self-replication from the first cell to divide
The fusion of the first helium atom in the heart of the first star
These may as well all have happened on the same Monday
September 22nd, 1997, the day before my first birthday
My first memory, crying in the dark
My parents igniting a tungsten halo on the ceiling of the purple room, comforting me
My mother holds my hand with her index finger, my father sings me a lullaby
The argument that they were just having, fades into a past
Which is as distant as the first words spoken in the language which would soon become Patois
This is the first time that I truly glimpsed the concept of ‘coming back’ from darkness
The first time I became aware that things don't ever go away
That there is no ‘away’ to go to
All of these moments are just here, in the storm
We separate them for our convenience, but in doing so, what do we miss?
This is not the first end of the world
We are not the first to live and die
Something always survives
Our children always survive
The survivors must labour in the aftermath of their ancestors’ decisions
We must accept that we are already dead
That we are the stewards of the afterlife
We must tend the garden for the next weary souls to die
There is no ‘away’ for our waste to go
There is no ‘away’ for our technology to go
There is no ‘away’ for our responsibility to go
There is no ‘away’ for us to go
When we dispose of, it doesn’t go away
It fills the craters of the Earth with plastic pus
When we decompose, we do not go away
We fill the stomachs and lungs of our kinfolk with nourishment
We cannot draw a clear boundary between ‘us’ and ‘nature’
We are a part of nature, and nature is a part of us
All of these natural beings:
The trees, the buildings, the internet, the coral reef, the magnetosphere
The fanged teeth, the toxins, the atom bombs, the drugs, the food crop, the temples, the mycelium, the daydreams, the TV static, the summer rain, the night sky
They are just sitting here, in the storm
We separate them for our convenience, but in doing so, what do we miss?
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4. |
Emerge
02:40
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I emerge from the tarmac and open my eyes
I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman, I know his disguise
Because he hides in the apathy, denial, and lies
He sows seeds of indifference to will our demise
And I'm complicit in the violence that butchers the sky
Oh my, I’m so tired of this viscous interior
Caught up in machinery tearing me into pieces of scarcity
This convenience tethers me to atemporal entities, uh
I've been catastrophising, across my many lives and
I don’t want to feel despair, but I can't deny it
When I try to fall asleep, I just lie here crying
Sketching prayers on my screen 'til my eyes tighten
It feels quiet sometimes, like a secret
It's not materially real, until you meet it
Bigger than the small expressions of weather or death
It’s bigger than the biosphere, bigger than the end
It feels like a distant existence, but it’s a part of me
Wave forms all collapse like a harmony
Or like a bombshell, like eruption
Like the rust scorching holes in the armoury
I took a drive last night tryna clear my head
Make the humming of the road what I feel instead
I took a drive last night tryna disappear
But every moment I'm alive I am still here
When this ends then where do we go, huh?
If it’s already done, how will we know, uh?
When this ends then where do we go, uh?
If it’s already done, how will we know, uh?
Dark nights are so deceitful, these skies hide constellations
Inside our light pollution all we see is our reflection
But hope is my direction, our dying breathes are precious
These tiny droplet choices, this future worth protecting
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hellocatfood + smaiduskhan Birmingham, UK
hellocatfood + smaiduskhan are a genre-blending multimedia electronic music duo based in Birmingham, UK. The duo combines the pointed and playful lyricism of Samiir Saunders (smaiduskhan) with the intricately glitchy live-coded instrumentation of Antonio Roberts (hellocatfood) to produce a densely layered sonic landscape which incorporates elements of spoken word, hip-hop, jazz, house, and glitch. ... more
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