1. |
AM Call
02:24
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2. |
Analogue Seance
10:20
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3. |
Black Rain
31:10
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I: Involuntary And Indiscriminate Extinction
eventually all lights go out
a week or two it takes to get used to
the silent chatter of the unseen storm
new bio-works emerge from the new soil, a new season
a season of nurture, a season of demise
and new tender flora sprouts from the ash
watered by rain drops born not of ammonia
by absence of meddling, carried by cracks in stones
where nothing human could poke
microbial mats blank over survivor remains
true symbiosis, as unfair as it may seem
dim sunlight cracks from the tired dry clouds
and new life is graced with wings of oxygen, sighs in relief
meta-replication, the quarrel begins
what was once old is now dying and will be replaced
vines and weeds take over the buildings,
crushed and dismantled,
surges to the watching moon, who sighs in relief
trash melts
II: In The Burrow
wide awake, and watching
as nature's black sea
flows down the monkey's throat
wide awake, as one of us
sticking out to look for food
predatorial, at the bottom
holding on...
holding on to each other
while holding on to others
holding on to each other
while holding on to others
to survive
(Portuguese)
no deleito de um novo começo
o espirito omnipresente
ejacula nos restos humanos
cruelmente invalida a sua existência
espreita pela brecha entre planos
e dá caras com plenas almas sofridas
que até no caldo, empinam as penas
reza para que não hajam sobreviventes
não existe subsistência
(English Translation)
In the delight of a new beginning
the omnipresent spirit
ejaculates in the human remains
cruelly invalidates their existence
peeks the gap between planes
and faces whole suffered souls
that even in the soup, tilt their feathers
pray so that there are no survivors
there's no subsistence
there's no subsistence
we will die in our burrows
holding ooooooon
III: Resting
instrumental
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4. |
Dort Mort
42:16
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0:00 - Limbo
And nothing comes to mind... I am the end of the beginning, the magnetic seal born from void - the star of dawn hides in plain sight. She warns about the dream - that atonement is but the beginning, and no memory is spared. The walls of my confinement weave with the boundaries of my own existence, the genesis of conscience lodged in this frail body. A vessel of depravity disguised as if I knew not the kind of horrors waiting in the endless sleep, through the bowels of the magnetic dawn. Yet, I lose my consciousness to god-knows-who, and I involuntarily close my eye and drift off...
1:25 - Street
From a pile of disposed rubber tires, deformed into an incomprehensible orgy of veins, as if melted by a thousand waves of heat, I rise. It's quiet and it smells. A familiar, yet, nauseating stench of fish, alerting my senses to the question - Where? I squeeze my brain, but I have no memory. A silhouette akin to Rorschach inkblots pounds in my vision, it’s a woman. The sky, a rotten green, reflects on the wet buildings and it's the day of the royal flood. The moon's covered with pitch black clouds but the poor light allows me to discern the vague features of my surroundings. Ruins, derelict and devoid of meaning are soil for millions of rust-covered steel sprouts, to bend and twist towards the sky, and bathe in the rain. Between this remote place, and my empty thought, I stand, quiet, and listen.
I can faintly hear the alloys corroding and dissolving. Backtracking my steps is useless. I know not from where I came. For a fast second, the moon lights a horizonless direction and my calculations are interrupted by the sound of my own footsteps. Focus... What was that? - “Is someone in there?" - The noise intruded from inside one of the many, undistinguishable decaying buildings. Without hesitation I draw near and go in.
3:51 - Apartment
I can't help but notice the intensification of the stench, like a million needles piercing my brain right through the nostrils. - "Who's there?" - I recognize the faint outlines of a public lobby, but the residual light from the street, breaching through the crack between the entrance doors, is the only thing preventing me from drowning in darkness. The left wall is painted with battered mailboxes, rotting in a sea of iron oxide. - A residence perhaps? - For a second, I wonder what kind of letters hide beneath the layers of tetanus. - "Hello?" - There are stacks and stacks of paper lying around. An out of place table rests in a corner of the room, and a document oddly aligns with its sides. It's a mostly intelligible record, but a polaroid is attached to it, dated May the 27th, 1887. Inadvertently, I find the source of the stench - the back of the polaroid is moist in a fetid fluid in which I accidentally dip my fingers. Could this be…? I refrain, and analyze the picture. The polaroid features a heavily distorted picture of a cow, resting in a bed of hay side by side with eight crying newborns, swollen and still covered in amniotic fluid. I hear a humming in the distance. The surrealistic nature of the picture fittingly sums my confusion towards the unrevealed events that might have led me...
I'm being watched. The sound of dry skin against these cold walls is like a fire alarm basking in the thickness of silence. Yet my curiosity invites me to proceed up these stairs I know nothing of, and to forget this place and circumstances are already too convoluted to mindlessly chase whatever I'm chasing. Yet, I grab on to the possibility of uncovering just the tiniest revealing detail of the predicament I'm in… And then I come to the obvious conclusion, I'm utterly oblivious to where I came from, lost in a seemingly endless maze of mold covered carpet and wallpaper. I stop for a second, to collect myself. As I go in, my eyes gradually adapt to the darkness to reveal the yellow-ish mold covered walls and rusty pipes. If it wasn't for the periodic sounds of water drops and creaking, a few more minutes in and I'd be halfway insane, with an overfed idea of being lost in the backdoors of existence. The sound of a shutting door resonates from the end of the hall. Far, I hardly react to it. As I was once able to adapt to the darkness, now I'm groping in the vastness of the big void. But I see a faint light down the hall, flickering, and then I'm aware. The door keeps banging, encouraged by a senseless air and I'm getting closer and closer, like a moth drawn to a flame.
The room inside is an unhealthy coagulation of mold. The air is so thick and foul I can feel it under my eyelids. - “Who’s there?” - A woman in rags weeps silently in a fetal position, with unusually bent joints. Hiding from god-knows-what. The tasteless nature of the sight perspectifies a different kind of frailty. - "Who are you? Are you alright?" - No response, only incomprehensible mumbling. I inspect closely… The woman's limbs start to twitch, gradually building to full body epileptic seizures. My first instinct is to extend my hand for help, but what unfolds motivates two to three steps of distance. The twitching body sinks into the floor slowly. Half of her face is already beyond the solid concrete and the watchful eye is flooded with blood, like her entire body is being delivered to the pressure - the pressure of being slowly devoured by a breach in reality. She looks straight through my flesh, making sure I’m not seeing things. I know she’s her. Her face in the inkblot becomes clearer, hiding in plain sight...
Woman - "Run."
The reality twist is as incomprehensible as it is unexpected and sudden. The sound of slithering flesh now echoes from below and above, as I look to the ceiling to find myself trapped beneath descending sacks of white meat hanging, reeking of smegma. I bump into them, with no choice. Gonads, dangling from the ceiling by thin white chords. Some fall to the ground, nauseating, accompanied by the mortifying sound of my confused feet, crushing them beneath. Endlessly slipping in the fluid covered floor, my whole existence feels like a phantom pain. The temperature rises. God. Where am I? Is this reality? I need to focus. I'm not sure what I'm running from, other than the hellish, pulsating scenario I'm trapped in. It's hallway after hallway of piss, twisting and morphing. What was once a mold covered hallway is now a red cylindric corridor, breathing and tightening, like the arsehole of a pagan god. My imagination's already too fertile for me to keep up. Completely terrified and disoriented by the sight, I realize my leg is being swallowed by the floor, just like that woman's body. The pain is aggravated by what the eyes see. I'm in the entrails... and I'm being digested. Like a thread running parallel to the intense pain of feeling every toe break and curl around each other, the thought bounces around in my skull - I'm unprepared to die such an isolating and agonizing death.
10:39 - Metallic Structure
Surrounded by nothing but pitch black, an ash halo tightens around my throat, drier than a desert. Somehow, I’m alive, albeit dizzy with numbing senses. The surface I stand in is warm and uneven, and together with the emetic effluvia of dead rat inwards, conjures the physical hallucination of a thick, warm blanket of lice and maggots twitching beneath my newly reformed toes, and I'm numb with phantom pain. I'm naked and unaware of my invisible surroundings. Without my clothes, my balls feel exposed to the dangers of the elements, and other sharp objects. My skin is covered with a layer of grime. I hear cries in the distance, disjointed prayers in an alien language, perpetuating an agonizing aura of hopelessness, in contrast with menacing esoteric chants of a higher order, howling in glee. Somehow, I manage to find comfort in the stealth provided by the darkness I'm smeared in. At the same time, each blind step I take unsettles that sense of false security, as I feel the presence of sharp hazards in the ground, like I'm walking in a soup filled with broken bones.
This is the true corner. The absence of light renders my eye useless, and I fumble around. My hand reaches a warm metallic wall and like a blind man, I sense screws and razor-like splinters of rust run through my fingertips. My mind connects with the thought of having transitioned into some kind of underworld, a human slaughterhouse. I stick to the wall and slowly make my way through the layers of sludge, feeling every inch of disease prying my open wounds to come in. After a disorienting moment, I turn a corner to a glimpse of light, allowing me to get the first look at where I'm at.
It takes a vile disposition to trace the layout of a rat maze such as that in which I stand. Squared, claustrophobic corridors of dark metallic plates, illuminated by menacing dim shafts of light, protruding from microscopic blackholes of rust in the structure. The floor and edges are covered with a black hemorrhage of decomposing gore and fecal matter. I feel as though at any moment, these walls could close, like a hydraulic press, and squash me like an insect.
A screeching akin to that of two large chunks of oxidized metal sharpening against one another emerges from the distant chants, and it's getting closer, as if it's inside the structure as well. I can hear it’s breath. I squat and tuck against the wall, waiting. Hesitating, I slowly peak the next corner in a T-shaped intersection. To the right, the path is blocked by a crawlspace of barbed wire. That’s out-of-the-question... To the left, the corridor disappears into a cone of darkness. My vision is blurred, and it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust, but then I see it, standing there, perfectly still, quietly watching, or hearing. My stomach churns. Whatever that thing is, it's visibly capable of tearing me into shreds. Down on all fours, a female torso with two large deformed metal blades welded to the upper arms by means of surgical metallic skeletal hardware implants. Its lower body disappears into the shadows. Its head is nothing but a lifeless woman’s face, attached to incomprehensible machinery. This must be the engineering of the star of dawn. Where did that come from…? A sudden moan echoes from further behind the creature, and I realize there’s more. The moan causes me to panic and gasp, and unsurprisingly, its pestilence reacts, slowly twisting its expressionless mug towards me. It is as if I’m playing red light green light with a sentinel from hell.
What should I do? Just like the corridor where that creature stands, the corridor I came from is smeared in black, and it could be a deadend, and in that case I would probably suffer the consequence of a bad choice. Probably…
Creature - "Look, pay attention."
The thing anticipates my effort to come up with a plan and moves, letting out a bloated cry. A horde of deformed amalgamations of toothless children and metallic scrap, spewing shit from every orifice, emerges from behind, seemingly connected to the creature’s bowel, presumably their mother’s. The creature is constrained by the impracticality of the deformation, so it moves slowly, but I have nowhere else to run to, besides through the damn barbwire, which I refuse to go in with my marbles dangling unprotected. One, two, eight restless lumps of flesh-experiment jostling over a free meal, plus the matriarch. From the rust holes in the metal walls, thin, perforating, animated wires sprout, and in a fraction of a second, one spears right through my left calf, limiting my movement. I have no choice, if I stay here, I might as well have my sack pierced. The twitching creature closes in rapidly, pushed by the horde of ravenous infants. In a leap of faith, I curl into the wire and crawl. I can’t feel my left leg, so with the aid of my left arm, I pry in, using my right hand to protect my offspring from the tetanus shards. I’m perforated beyond oblivion, a battle between pain and rushed adrenaline, but that doesn’t impede me from looking back at my attacker and being confronted with the reality that I’m slowly leaving bits of myself behind, hanging from the wire. The creature swings itself violently into the crawlspace, but struggles to fit. The whole thing shakes around me, a storm of shards, sculpting my skin with lacerations. In an attempt to free myself, I agitate and twist, but it only worsens, I’m bleeding like a horse, crying, gorging in a burst of vomit bile and phlegm and succumbing to funneling vision. The crawlspace gains a slight inclination down. I’m basking in my quickly infecting wounds and my feculent blood and pus. About to shut down, in a sudden pop, like sliding through grease, I’m loose from the avulsing wire, and begin sliding down the funneling shaft.
I’m free, I got out… I hear the creature crying and wrestling above. A fat stream of my own discharge drips from the shaft, but at least I’m still breathing.
18:35 - Oubliette
I pull the strength to stand. A sensation like that of a membrane detaching from the above inward of my left eye, pulsates with searing pain, and I’m partially blind. Amidst the struggle, I squeezed my scrotum so hard it recoiled in fear... I’ve been here before. Scattered improvised tools. A humming of guilt.
- “Who’s there?” - In the darkened corner... that’s the woman, before I got here... The woman is wrapped in a cocoon of gangrene veins and mold, strapped in place by a metallic exoskeleton, with no anthropomorphic regards nor compassion for the limits of the human joints. Her feet are missing and she lays her head back, a concubine for the pervert and miserable denizens.
I get closer, but I’m distracted by flashes of the creature above, banging and crying. I hope it doesn’t fit through the damn hole.
Woman - “Look closer. Don't you remember me, love? By my bile, the fiend summoned you here. They foretold you would come.”
- “What?”
Woman - “Your shivers point towards me, flowering skin. Does what you’ve seen so far remind you of anything?”
- “Who are you?” - The woman struggles to move, held in place. Her breathing seems to be sustained by an internal mechanism of some sort, as with each breath, a metallic clank can be heard.
Woman - “You didn’t have to disappear. Don’t you think?”
- “I don’t know who you are! What is this place?”
Woman - “This place is hell for me and you, love. Eight infants… Yours and mine. Don’t you recognize this room? Yes... nothing these butchers do to me will ever be worse than what you did.”
I watch as the woman breaks. The humming grows - the sound of buzzing flies pierces my tympani. Slowly, she lifts her arm, pointing towards a metallic shutter in the far side of the room, behind vinyl curtain strips. Before, it was just a hunch. This place exists beyond our comprehension, and it knows who I am.
Woman - “There. If you have the means, that’s where you have to go, down the inverted meat shaft. Do not feel helped. I’m merely doing the duty I was ordained to. They said I could be free. This is the last thing you can do for me, but I will never forgive you.”
The woman passes out with her pale arm lifted towards the shutter. She is insane and I do not know her. I’m truly nothing but a rat, led down the snake's throat. My only choice is to go through, or I can wait here and rot in the flagellated bulks of demon shit. Her silhouette pounds my anemic vision like a doomsday flash burn. My strength slips through my fingertips, but with a feeble pull, I manage to lift the shutter just enough to pass under.
23:07 - Elevator
(Woman - “I’m the dawnstar, love.”)
Stumbling, partially blind and seeing double, I lift my head in an attempt to survey what’s beyond the shutter. There’s a small cubicle of steel. The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in rot and dozens of sigma jars are stacked up in the corners, permeating the air. In the far side of the room, hiding behind the layers of contagious dead necrophage, are a set of buttons. I press them blindly and listen... It’s coming… The humming is never gone, it only gets louder... A set of doors opens, rupturing the layer of viscera. A pornographic display of stripped, dismembered, drug pierced hookers, is arranged in walls of white but stained and broken tiles, all the way down what appears to be a squared elevator shaft. The elevator itself is nothing but an unstable steel platform - What is this god-forsaken place? With no choice I curl into the cage and watch as the doors close and it descends… I’m about to collapse...
The prophecy seethes into the mind - the magnetic seal shall be vessel. Under the watchful eye of the magnetic dawn, he shall succumb and cross the gate. From one end to the other of the fiend’s abominable esophagus. Two thirds shall he remember the mother, and the eight offerings. And upon the end of the third third, he shall be born, the snake... Or some nonsense like that... Amen...
Curled in the corner, I await for the elevator to stop. The deeper it goes, the more repulsively disfigured the shaft walls become. Anthropomorphic silhouettes warped and forgotten above, in violent, and gratuitous ways... I'm hard and excited. The star of dawn hides in plain sight…
The magnetic seal shall be vessel… Or some nonsense like that… Fucking cannibals…
The elevator breaks abruptly and weighs down with a piercing screech. I hold on to the steel bars as the whole cage shakes violently. This is the last stop.
27:18 - Tunnel
As the elevator doors open, the air thickens with a colder, invisible miasmatic flatus of vitriolic spur. I have nowhere else to go. Beyond me stands a tunnel of emptiness. And empty I limp in, in pure silence...
Scum - “Unsuppress thy remembrance. Indulge.”
The temperature drops. The walls of the tunnel form an arc, no higher than my own height if I was able to stand up straight, cold as a cadaver’s chest.
Scum - “Unsuppress thy remembrance, seal of the magnetic dawn.”
What do you mean? Now of all times, I’m losing my sanity. I’m surprised it lasted this goddamn long… It might be just another septicemic hallucination, but the tunnel seems to be funneling, slowly, and I can feel its breath.
How long?
Scum - “For as long as it takes.”
What?
The goddamn body didn’t fit the trunk…
Lost in empty thought, numb to surprises, my suspicion is confirmed. The tunnel is no wider than a horizontal manhole now. I conjure the thought of having to squeeze through a narrower and narrower tube, until I’m stuck, with no energy to reverse-crawl out of it. Now, that’s a way to go.
Scum - “'Tis just skin. Tuck thyself in.”
The tunnel changes over time. In so many ways, like humans do. I'm tucked in the prolapsed rectum to the nameless. I’m crawling through the rotten crack of a diseased whore. In a pathetic attempt to redeem, all squeezed like a chorizo, I masturbate to the thought of returning home. I’m crawling in a smear of shit and my own cum, and I’m almost required to hold my breath to squeeze through. It's not enough.
Home...
What’s there at home anyway?
(Woman - "You’re not welcome.")
I realize I’m drifting in and out of consciousness. Gapes in my short-term memory. Perhaps this is divine punishment, but could I be…? The woman, she’s familiar. She is her!
Her who?
Eight offerings to the magnetic dawn… eight… offerings… I’m lost, the shell of a hollow man rotting in a flesh coffin. The humming grows, I am guilty, constricted in the bowels of the judge... I'm still aroused.
And then I see it, thru the scourged, translucent walls, forming a crimson cone of light. Slowly it grows in intensity. In and out. Yes... A bright red sears through my withered eye, until it transmutes to pure white. I hear them, far but getting closer. The echoing choirs, the laughs of cynicism, oblivious to this shithole of pus and gunk. The heavenly orgies basking in eternal ecstasy. The star of dawn hides in plain sight, behind sight, under the arachnoid. - The bottom of the goddamn demon’s gob. - Elation boils my veins, ruptured, and a million sharp needles of blood sprout from every orifice in my cracked skin. I'm reminded of where I came from. I am the magnetic scum. The humming melts and pries my attention, like the unborn in the mother’s womb, but whatever form of guilt I felt vanishes. I ejaculate in beatific cries, and my attention disintegrates towards the light. This must have been the reason all along. My eye burns, but this is how it feels to be reborn. The realization of being nothing but paradisiac sludge in a planet of silent winds is nothing but humus beneath the cuticles of divine madness. I am reborn. I’m everything and nothing, and what I am has no consequence. I am the beginning of the end. Kill... Kill.. Kill...
39:54 - House
I wake wrapped in sweat. The dead light of night withers through the holes in the blinds. I’m getting out of bed. The moist carpet feels welcoming, but there’s something seriously wrong. The electronics are dead, there’s no water in the pipes, and all doors and windows are locked. The car is still parked outside. This house is cold and quiet, and empty, but it’s not mine. The humming is never gone.
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5. |
Analogue Seance
10:20
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6. |
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(Portuguese)
chega a hora de o vento levar esta transmissão
para lá do sono, para um dia se reencontrar
corta o plano, como uma faca força as portas do paraíso
re-emerge no epicentro do lago ancestral
e o sangue jorra ao mar, das portas do infinito
e o sangue jorra ao mar
e o sangue jorra ao mar, das portas do infinito
e o sangue jorra ao mar
mas há tanto para amar, à porta do paraíso
há tanto para amar
há tanto para amar, à porta do paraíso
há tanto para amar
e há tanto para amar, e há tanto para julgar (do sol nastence)
e há tanto para amar, e há tanto para matar (ao sol poente)
deixa-me entrar
entre as esferas do dilúvio
fecha os olhos, e deixa a cobra sufocar
e o vento sopra do norte
embala a calma da noite
e a onda forma-se no horizonte
leva-nos nas nossas camas
leves barcas para almas adormecidas
teste cego para a sorte
que as camas hão-de virar
e à noite dormimos com os rádios ligados
à espera da transmissão
agora, agora
no escuro embala
uma boca excitada
consome a espera
e queima o ego
anima, anima
e na falta de calma
invoca-se o estimulo
que corta a alma
e queima o ego, não
anima, anima, anima, anima o ego
agora, agora, agora, agora
(e há tanto para amar, à porta do paraiso)
(há tanto para amar)
(e há tanto para amar, à porta do paraiso)
(há tanto para amar)
(e há tanto para amar, à porta do paraiso)
(há tanto para amar)
(deixa-me entrar)
(deixa-me entrar)
deixa-me entrar
(English Translation)
arrives, the hour for the wind to take this transmission
beyond sleep, to be found again some day
cuts the plane, like a knife pries the doors to paradise
reemerges in the epicenter of the ancestral lake
and the blood pours to the sea, from the doors of infinity
and the blood pours to the sea
and the blood pours to the sea, from the doors of infinity
and the blood pours to the sea
but there's so much to love, at the door to paradise
there's so much to love
there's so much to love, at the door to paradise
there's so much to love
and there's so much to love, and there's so much to judge (from sunrise)
and there's so much to love, and there's so much to kill (to sunset)
let me in
between the spheres of the flood
close your eyes and let the snake suffocate
the wind blows from the north
lulls the calm of night
and the wave forms in the horizon
carry us in our beds
light barques for sleeping souls
blind test for luck
that the beds shall turn
and at night, we sleep with our radios on
waiting for the transmission
now, now
in the dark lulls
an aroused mouth
consumes the wait
and burns the ego
animate, animate
and in the lack of calm
is invoked, the stimuli
that cuts the soul
and burns the ego, no
animate, animate, animate, animate the ego
now, now, now, now
(and there's so much to love, at the door of paradise)
(there's so much to love)
(and there's so much to love, at the door of paradise)
(there's so much to love)
(and there's so much to love, at the door of paradise)
(there's so much to love)
(let me in)
(let me in)
let me in
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Duarte Miguel Portugal
Hi. That's me with a sleepy kitten and a gloomhaven sticker glued to my forehead..
"This. Is Deep
Metal..."
- Sá Pedro
"Not a fan.."
- Mom
⌬
... more
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