1. |
Beautiful Shoes song
05:09
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a step, a stop
not so much shuffling, hobbling, or stumbling
but stopping and stopping,
more stopping than walking
then falling forward
falling and stopping
forward and stopping
stopping and falling
stopping and walking
walking and falling
across Creek Road
and then down the High Street
into Douglas Way
Amersham Vale
Amersham Grove
right into Edward Street
left down the High Street
across Creek Road
into Watergate Street
up to the river
and back down
Watergate Street
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2. |
Cloud of Dreams song
06:34
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woke up one morning
singing phrases from a dream
into his mobile phone
his note book out of reach
in the morning
it doesn’t matter
one fleeting impression
among many others
dream diary in the cloud
in the morning
a cloud of dreams
geo-tagged, metadata,
dreams no longer forgotten
from this morning
this song, singular thing
thing, ephemeral thing
a memory from a bar
a run around the park
in the morning
dreams all encoded,
uploaded, to a cloud
[there’s no one listening in]
from pillow to server
in the morning
a cloud of dreams
related to a data subject
pseudonymised fragmented
from this morning
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3. |
Ray song
03:24
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waiting now for the story
of how the neighbour
is being played
by another actor
Ray went away for a long time
and now he looks quite different
but he does all the things that Ray does
cleans his car
stands outside and smokes a cigarette
he’s played by a different actor now
someone who doesn’t look like him
what can I do?
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4. |
Riverside Living song
02:49
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turning the tide on the river
getting higher every day
down by the creekside
high spec apartments
higher and higher and higher
every day
selling place to the foreigners
nothing gets in their way
down by the river
water and networks
slower and slower and slower
every day
turning their backs on the village
(but) nothing just goes away
sewage and bandwidth
the tide and the rainfall
higher and narrower and higher and narrower
every day
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5. |
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6. |
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7. |
Signs and Wonders song
22:55
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signs and wonders
every last Friday
I've got a folder
on my computer
named 'Current Projects'
this song is in it
along with others
they're current projects
a woman stops me
stops me to ask me
is that the Albany
the Albany Deptford
I say yes
I didn’t realize
it was so close
I could park
I could walk
I say I guess
myself wants to talk
to talk to yourself
nobody trusts this
warm weather
they’re all wearing coats
singing songs
songs with lyrics
full of meaning
the boy walked into
into the road
because he was hit by
hit by the bus
he’s got the ‘ump
Emergency Tax
basically
literally
it should be
no larger than
a sheet of A4
a sheet of A4 paper
the girl that passed
passed on the platform
the aroma of chocolate
It's just the worstest
time really
The Welshman on
on the night bus
said he'd had enough
of this country
he couldn't wait
to get back to China.
she's living on toast
two phones
on the bus
New Cross pavements
health insurance?
music on earphones
whose earphones?
his earphones?
no, mine.
unattended bags
cause delays
please keep yours with
you at all times
the exclamation mark
is to the right
of the block of text
and runs its full height
vertically
the point at its base
is a graphical image
of a case
we stop and start
through the emptied estates
CCTV
is in operation
at all times
at this station
in the same place
but not in the same state
in the same place
but not in the same time
the thing I notice
on the old estate
the smell of weed
new seats
and the puddles are
all in the same place
the puddles are
still in the same place
to help and bless
and save the working
the working classes
stinking unpaved
unpaved lane
rough sailors
from cattle steamers
women selling
jumping jacks
men hawking
primrose roots
rabbits dangling
from the end of a stick
here would be a vendor
a vendor of whirligigs
there a mender
of old umbrellas
a blind beggar
Italian women
women with cages
of fortune telling
fortune telling canaries
the hemp that is to hang me
is not grown yet
the police stopped
stopped all such customs
the electric light
can never be applied
applied indoors
without the production
of an offensive smell
which undoubtedly
causes headaches
about a pound a week
from the butchers'
and greengrocers’ shops
gaslights flared
flared and flickered
wild and ghastly
haggard groups
of slipshod dirty
dirty women
bargaining for
scraps of stale meat
and frost-bitten vegetables
wrangling about
short weight and bad
and bad quality
fish stalls and fruit stalls
lined the edge of the greasy
the greasy pavement
sending up odours
as foul as the language
of sellers and buyers
blood and sewer water
crawled from under doors
and out of spouts
reeked down to the gutters
among offal, animal and vegetable
in every stage of
of putrefaction
she would bring
bring a tray up
with a bowl of water
soap and flannel
and a towel for washing
and make our bed
comfortable
and meals such as
as we could eat
were brought upstairs
sometimes Mum was
given back
a shilling or two
I can imagine how
she must have saved this
to buy something
to improve the home
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Steven Ball London, UK
Steven Ball has been working as an artist since the early 1980s, in film, video, sound, installation, and performance, and has been a member of the post-punk DIY group Storm Bugs. In 2014 he started writing and recording songs as a solo project, being particularly concerned with experimenting with which kinds of texts might constitute a song lyric. ... more
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