"THE NATURE OF TONGUES" was created in a different than usual mode, as I recorded the complex spoken word vocals first and then overdubbed the music to fit them. I played every instrument on it and all in real time without any sequencing. I pushed hard on the limits of what music can be. Out beyond Space Is The Place! Out beyond Trout Mask Replica! Puppies couldn't get any skinnier! The poetry is a surrealistic description of the European invasion of Turtle Island (North America) and the Native American resistance to it.
Atlatls, awls, arrowheads, enhanced artifacts,
Abandoned reptilian markings,
And additional anomalies from the ancient abyss
Avenge ruthless arrangements
And infiltrate the unconscious awareness
Of our alien adversaries
Whose furious incursion into our chelonian domain
Sent ruthless ripples into the adjacent dimensions
Of which these walking spiritual dead
Are abysmally unaware.
Aboriginal elementals dance sideways
To ward off the erasure of the contents of codices,
But many are still destroyed.
Art will scream;
Art will scream in the dying of the dream!
But when the accented architecture aligns
With the appropriate astronomy,
Ritual rites will reactivate
An irreversible dismantling of manifest destiny,
And we will abstrusely analyze our options,
Including auxiliary amnesty for allies.
Although we are attuned and entrapped,
And we do not appreciate
The engagement depicting the site,
Someday, from the covert locations
Where the Mexica grew amaranth after the fall
And took clandestine baths,
Arcane autochthonal archers will return.
Here falls the violent shadow of Europe.
(They pretend to bring us a benevolent heaven,
But it turns out to be a horror-ridden hell instead.)
Glory for their golden god
Is what these veritable vermin seek
As they carve their ghastly incursions
Into their idea of a frontier,
Extending their global empires
By germs, genocide, and gore
Until the sun never sets
On their arrogance and depravity.
But if we dance long and hard enough,
Graves will open,
And generations of ghosts will regenerate,
Glistening in the gloaming.
Meanwhile, a holy hieroglyph of hummingbird
Suspends itself in living luminous light.
Bones of the ancestors were torn from bitter earth!
The burning wasteland urges assimilation or death,
Between which there is microscopic difference.
Yet defiantly, we celebrate a crucial connection
To ecologically-bonded totemic archetypes.
Directions, seven and sacred,
Now nearly dormant for half a millennium,
Gather spirit, data, energy, and mass
From the origin of all poetic assault.
Engaging inspiration, shades of entheogenic reptiles merge
With an enormous degree of velocity,
And amidst a vast hypercussive technique,
Time speeds toward its starry close.
Families are fragmented and desolate,
But still telepathically focused.
The furor on their frontier is fierce and formidable,
But the fragile frequency does not fully fade.
Injustices against the indigenous expand
As the iron alphabet rules the boarding schools.
Then follows a parade of exploitations:
Iron addictions!
Iron agriculture!
Iron calendars!
Iron chastity!
Iron commerce!
Iron gender roles!
Iron music!
Iron politics!
Iron pollution!
Iron religion!
Iron shame!
Iron violence!
Until we're trapped in Eurocentrism
Like scorpions in amber.
Vocables and visions verify that various nations
Will be released from the vortex of vertigo and virus
Before they vanish completely.
Vigilance and vengeance will divert further devastation
As subversive avengers count coup
On the languages of their enemies!
But spiritual escorts bring evidence of entangled entropy
Venerated in volatile circumstances
Within the whirlwind of the whispering worlds!
Tormented tongues and torturous trophies
From ransacked temples
Serve to deflect attention from footprints downstream
Leading to defendable doorways
On the east and west of dwellings
Where tomorrow lies beneath yesterday.
Mycology mythologizes mind-manifesting memories
Into an amazing maze made of mysterious mystic maize
As Xtabentun flowers flourish at the egress from Xibalba.
Synesthesia straddles sacred senses
Without compartmentalized segments
Or extra-hemispherical authoritarian limitations.
The nature of tongues is that not everything can be translated.
Connotation and denotation vary with intention and extension.
Tremors possess the shimmering trickster
To trigger techniques of tenacious thunder
Entangled in the temporal distortion of the
Heightening biochemical oscillations in my owl-merged brain.
Rapid paradise! Rapid paradox!
Present at creation, ravens represent regeneration!
Termination will not be tolerated!
Human beings meet at the river
To trade art and other essentials,
Speaking in many almost lost languages.
Xenochronicity astonishes an advanced audience
With its unpredictable polyrhythmic permutations.
Atonality defies any circumscription via consonance
As waveforms reverberate across the sonic spectrum.
When primal power in this hemisphere fully revives,
Zenith and anti-zenith will interplay
Through in throughout the artist's shamanic self,
With zymurgy emerging from free form energy,
Emitting enzymes from zonal zephyrs,
Both zoogeographic and zoomorphic,
Leaving these zombies zealous for our concept of zero.
[Copyright 2020 Todd Tamanend Clark. All rights reserved.]
credits
from WHIRLWIND OF THE WHISPERING WORLDS,
released August 1, 2020
TODD TAMANEND CLARK: Voice, Electric Guitar, Synthesizer, Bass Pedals, Electronic Percussion.
TODD TAMANEND CLARK was born on August 10, 1952 in Greensboro, Pennsylvania. He was deeply influenced by Native American
cultures, owl ornithology, the Monongahela River, 1950s science-fiction cinema, silver age comic books, beat poetry, space jazz, and the American psychedelic music of the 1960s. He was an early pioneer of adding synthesizers and effects processing to a punk rock aesthetic....more
Cryostasium, the brainchild of one Cody Maillet, combines vocaloid pop with extreme metal for an unsettling, one-of-a-kind release. Bandcamp Album of the Day Oct 8, 2020
Gnarly punk rock from the Philadelphia duo is unhinged in the best way, an in-the-red sonic assault a la Motorhead/Stooges. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 9, 2024
The iconic and underheard L.A. noise pop pioneers ruminate on Beatles songs both iconic and underheard on this latest release. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 13, 2024
Seven astounding, psychedelia-spangled new age meditations from producer and musician Jessica Zambri (Mass Gothic, Solvey, Zambri). Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 18, 2024