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The Lakes of Zones B and C

by Emperor X

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Mejic
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Mejic Thoroughly well-crafted collection of anthemic indie punk magic. Chad proved himself once again that he is still one of the best songwriters of his generation. Favorite track: Stars.
ALL_SEEKING_EYE
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ALL_SEEKING_EYE Music for a bittersweet utopia. There's a large range in styles compared to some of his earlier records yet it remains cohesive.
Favorite track: Communists in Luxury
bardkings
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bardkings A beautiful album that gives me hope for the future of our world!! Worth every cent and will be the soundtrack of my boring office job for at least the next month. Favorite track: The Anthem of the Greater McMurdo Station Chamber of Commerce.
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  • The Lakes of Zones B and C Songbook
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    THIS SONGBOOK IS NOW ONLY AVAILABLE AT CONCERTS FOR THE TIME BEING. (This might change in the future. We'll see.)

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1.
False Metal 02:55
I wrote a song about boxing but I'm better at avoiding a fight I never gave or received a punch and I'm singing songs about freedom on the cheapest PA I could find made in some sweatshop with no way out and no break for lunch there's no need to give myself a bloody eye I don't want my family exposed great job O sweatshops of America with your fitness apps and your CO2 and malarial outbreaks in Malibu and my kid in the camps and a guard with a gun staring past her and he's listening to false metal I'm recording songs about rebellion in an attic that I rent from a friend in a lowkey utopian ethnostate and we're both a bit uneasy but it's better for us both if we wait or do nothing there's no parallel parking in hell there's no need to give ourselves a hernia the real heavy lifting's for the young it's alright, we've done enough, let's go to sleep yeah we've won the right to get import booze and cartel cocaine and organic shoes and a guarantee of immunity from disaster while we're listening to false metal I see the sunlight in the window and a pile of my passed-out friends under the ruins of an upturned couch I went outside and started walking to the gas station next to the house because there's no more time and the power's out the fake priest sold napalm to the bourgeoisie while the fake proletariat got stoned on expensive weed they bought with Face ID and if nothing's real, then we get to choose it's the end of time on a Carnival cruise or a warehouse job and a blunt force bruise or a nuclear war, or a great refusal to call us dumb, you can tell us to leave but the coward's favorite word's naive it's endless grief or a face tattoo of an Oreo and false metal
2.
Rojava Punks 02:59
I took the early train the Brussels ICE two Rojava punks sat across from me one had the gleaming eyes of a new recruit and returned my wary gaze with a smile and a fake salute and then we drifted off they had something that I recognized and that makes me scared they said nothing but I read their eyes and I had a dream about a bomb at night in Maine ÉLAN VITAL I must've slept too long and I missed my stop and these Rojava punks suggested we all get off at once they took me in on trust they let me crash their house because they see no distinction between a civilian and them and then I feel it there's no chance for a change in the weather in the time it takes to make a fist keep it up until the world gets better but we hope we're never careless or arrogant NEVER Rojava punks on a training run Rojava punks empty stadium Rojava punks yellow red and green I woke up to see two empty seats across from me but now I feel it there's no chance for a change in the weather in the time it takes to rule without you
3.
Jan came to pick us up in his new convertible and we drove straight out to the beach the sun charged the batteries on Lena's GPS we laughed at its accent and its stupid mistakes but its intentions were good and I guess that matters looking out from eight miles up the pilot checks her flight plan sees a backwards unexploded inverted star and no one on the freeway in heaven and no one in the bicycle lane in heaven and everybody losing their minds because no one's on the freeway in heaven and no one's in the bicycle lane in heaven and no one hears the sirens go off because we're all in our houses asleep this was protected land but God built an arsenal and now there's a hole in the beach so we found another beach three exits down our parents named us after not a goddamned thing but their intentions were good and I hope that matters looking up we see a light flash three times every second in a line with other lights which also flash decide dirty cops or allied ghosts or satellites reflected either way we're unexploded inverted stars and no one's on the freeway in heaven and no one's in the bicycle lane in heaven inflation's getting out of control but the money's fake so no one cares and no one's on the freeway in heaven and no one's in the bicycle lane in heaven and no one hears the sirens go off and no one should because everybody's free
4.
expect a long delay in line on judgment day I'd try to help but I have to work an extra shift so I braved the boring dawn and we all got omicron and no one cares, but they'll live to regret it when we mass quit we're communists in luxury whether we know it or not we all inherited compressed ideals that don't make any sense now we can live it up becoming communists in luxury demanding better in the actual/material you waste our money on the metaverse we build a cultural time bomb our friend was acting weird one day she disappeared locked her account, said goodbye, and made one last post it read: "DEAR SUBCOMMITTEE BOSS WE ARE AN ALBATROSS AND YOU'RE A NECK WE'RE A DEAD BIRD SCREAMING THAT YOU'RE A PSYOP a tide of communists in luxury is washing over every hedonistic holdout our lack of certainty is no excuse for nihilistic dread demand utopia committed communists in luxury no one imagined we'd be winners in the long run but a wave of communists in luxury's a realistic threat I called that friend from back home when she answered the phone, she said: "IS OUR FEAR OVERBLOWN SHINING FLASHLIGHTS AT DRONES AS THEY CIRCLE OVERHEAD? WE DESCEND FROM A LINE OF HUMANISTS. WE REJECT THE DECLINE BUT WE NEED MORE VOLUNTEERS. DO YOU KNOW GOD IS LOVE AND THAT MARKET RISK IS BEST MINIMIZED ON A COMMUNAL SCALE? THEN YOU'RE A COMMUNIST." they call us communists in luxury and I guess they're right we're communists in luxury and I hope it makes our offspring proud that we were communists in luxury no one can say that they're a winner until we've all won and we're all communists in luxury no CCP QUIT
5.
in a dark park in Emmerich we took a break to rest our feet someone was playing the Backstreet Boys on the stereo too loud for us to sleep the team was practicing in the stadium and we saw a crow in the setting sun keeping watch and vaguely threatening and flying in a wide circle I won't believe we're out of here until the second plane's left the captain of the football team fell down to her death after clinging to the landing gear shouting "I STILL LOVE YOU" on the riverbank in Emmerich we stared out at the tourist ship doing donuts in the Rhine and listening to bad schlager meanwhile you stole your mom some gasoline you broke every stupid rule but you maintained quarantine inside the bar with broken windows and wrote another sad email to me but I won't believe you're out of there until the second plane's left the captain of the football team fell down to her death after clinging to the landing gear shouting "I STILL LOVE YOU AND I ALWAYS LOVED YOU AND I'LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU" all the way down the crows were gathering in the harbor light they sang to us and kept us up all night but no one complained about the noise by Saturday it won't matter because the summertime's not made to last I scratched a question mark in the drying grass and threw out last year's expired E-Z Pass and banged the fence until that cloud of nervous crows scattered I won't believe we're out of here until the second plane's left the captain of the football team fell down to her death after clinging to the landing gear no one's getting out of here alone we're not safe just like that captain of that football team except we're all just swinging from the chandeliers and it isn't enough
6.
we grew up in a golden age we made out in the everglades we knew we never really fit in the older folks were scared of us when we screamed at them to ride the bus but we were unconvincing and now we'll die on fire we'll die inside frozen ice cores we'll close our eyes we'll wait we'll all join hands like little fish in Australia birds, terrified, fly away too late we'll fall downhill like heavy rocks in a landslide like aftershocks on the seaside wait wait wait wait wait wait wait we'll die on fire we'll die inside frozen ice cores we'll all join hands we'll die die die die die we'll die we'll die die
7.
we're still wired do not claim you honor them you do not you do not you do not you do not know how to honor them in block-time
8.
Hummingbird 03:39
hmmm hm hm hmmm hm hm hummingbird hmmm hm hm hmmm hummingbird a stray projectile cuts you off in the rain fly away just in time to get caught in the eye of a slowly-forming hurricane the storm tracks northward up the coast towards home you're at rest in the center the currents are warm and you call me on the telephone and you say: "hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm I'm still hummingbird hmmm hm that's all hummingbird" then the storm makes landfall your wings move so fast under the streaming light the air swallows up every word that we'll ever speak but the air also holds you high our seawall fell down the ocean broke through we're nothing like you hummingbird
9.
Stars 04:23
stars on the wall mostly main sequence and gold like ours we're on our own at night on the roof of the stupid party that I met you at hey we lost control of the island now we swim around with all our stuff in two boxes I took off on Lufthansa and you flew EasyJet we cried like luminant plankton you don't ever have to justify girl justify boy justify person I don't want to be sung to justify girl justify boy justify person I don't want to be clean eyes still on our own blue-green plasma hits colonial towers we both got scared at night in the sea when a rogue medusa waved back at us hey we lost control of the airline now we're falling but we saved a lot on the shipping and stripped the shielding off now no one's taking deliveries no lights, I'm not feeling well we gave all our bikes to the strikers in the hurricane and DHL lost our furniture and they don't ever have to justify girl justify boy justify person I don't want to be sung to not tonight you don't ever have to justify girl justify boy justify person I don't want to be clean

credits

released April 10, 2022

This album was financed in part by the Federal Republic of Germany's Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien via the Musikfonds program: www.musikfonds.de

Cover art by Dieter Brehm:
www.dieterbrehm.com
crmatheny.net/board/2022/02/13/non-euclidean-lakes-melting-through-space/

Tracked at:
- Bird Cloud Recordings in Edwardsville, IL in the summer of 2019
- Donau115 in Berlin from the fall of 2019 to the spring of 2022
- a basement in Brieskow-Finkenheerd in the winter of 2022

Produced by Ryan Wasoba with Chad Matheny

Mixed by Ryan Wasoba

Mastered by Chad Matheny

Lyrics and music by Chad Matheny

Arrangements by Chad Matheny and Ryan Wasoba

All instruments and vocals performed by Chad Matheny and:

1. "False Metal"
- Ryan Wasoba (electric guitar, drums)

2. "Rojava Punks"
- Austin Cebulski (saxophone)
- Clayton Norm Kunstel (drums)
- Nika Vodwood (vocals)
- Ernie Tadic-Harding (vocals)

3. "Freeway in Heaven"
- Declan Forde (piano seeds)
- Jordan Dinsdale (drum seeds)
- Akshay Alawat, Jörg Sascha Bauß, Niklas Alt, Ruby Bilger, Rachel Glassberg, Johnny Kulo, Nora Jim, Elena Mikhaylova, and Pauline Peek (vocals, sirens)

4. "Communists in Luxury"
- Clayton Norm Kunstel (drums)
- Ryan Wasoba (electric guitar incl. the epic solo, bass, screams)

5. "The Crows of Emmerich"
- anonymous crows (murmurations)

6. "The Anthem of the Greater McMurdo Station Chamber of Commerce"
- Austin Cebulski (saxophone)
- Cody Henry (trombone, sousaphone)
- Dustin Shrum (trumpet)
- Emma Tieman (strings)
- Akshay Alawat, Jörg Sascha Bauß, Niklas Alt, Ruby Bilger, Rachel Glassberg, Johnny Kulo, Nora Jim, Elena Mikhaylova, and Pauline Peek (vocals)

7. "Do Not Claim You Honor Them, You Do Not Know How to Honor Them"
- Manal Moukaddem
- Georgia Mchaileh
- Oscar Niemeyer (reverb)

8. "Hummingbird"
- Akshay Alawat, Jörg Sascha Bauß, Niklas Alt, Ruby Bilger, Rachel Glassberg, Johnny Kulo, Nora Jim, Elena Mikhaylova, and Pauline Peek (vocals, snaps, claps)
- Cody Henry (sousaphone)
- Dustin Shrum (trumpet)
- Emma Tieman (strings)

9. "Stars"
- Austin Cebulski (saxophone)
- Clayton Norm Kunstel (drums)
- Cody Henry (trombone)
- Dustin Shrum (trumpet)
- Emma Tieman (strings)
- Nika Vodwood (vocals)
- Ryan Wasoba (acoustic guitar)

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