We’ll make no apologies for the extensive posts about our compilation Quiet, Constant Friends over the next few weeks ahead of its release of the 17th October. We’re excited, okay?
Today we are delighted to unveil ‘King of Crumbs’ by Ben Seretan. The song is taken from his album In Two, recorded as Ben Seretan & The Early in 2012, and is inspired, at least in part, by the writing of Patti Smith. As Ben explains:
“I wrote the lyrics to this song on a cocktail napkin on an airplane to Portland, Oregon after reading Patti Smith’s description of Jim Carroll in Just Kids – in writing about their romance, she describes him as a mix of Rimbaud and Parsifal, the holy fool, who in Wagner’s last opera, wanders a magical kingdom where “time becomes space.”
The track is a strange one, the instrumentation dischordant and unsettling, Seretan’s vocals delivered in a detached murmur. Things grow increasingly ominous right up to the noisy finale, where the music comes together in a clattering collision of percussion and guitars and the snarled mantra of “let slip the dogs of war”. Check out the full lyrics below and see how much of Parsifal and Patti Smith you can glean from them:
“The brass ring fell from my grip
Trip to the moon
Sleep in the daytime
Tennessee fell in the ocean
Our drugstore home under a shipwreckCall me the fool, wander the kingdom
I broke my bow over my knee
Honey the lids, hang by the ankles
The king of crumbs biting his thumbLet slip the dogs of war”
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The artwork is by the excellent Nottingham-based artist Mouni Feddag. You can check out her work here, buy some lovely things here, or follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.
You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now from the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. Remember that the tapes comes with extremely limited edition art prints, so if you like the work of Mouni and Co. then be sure to get your order in.
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