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The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity

by Seeming

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Double CD features the album The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity, as well as full-length bonus CD Monster.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
The Fates 02:33
The fates are coming They’re nothing like you at all I can hear their hundred hearts through the wall So rise up, with eyes for surprise ahead The fates are coming And all the animals somehow know Something's happening very big and very slow So rise now, wildfire, rise The fates are coming With a law beyond the law And a wounded reptile called America It's more, not less It's limitless and more Businessmen on fire Businessmen in flames Rise the inferno Whisper their names
2.
Go Small 04:02
Write the song you need to hear When you've done it, tell me how Where I walked the day Amelia died Is where you'll find me now I dreamt of gutting billionaires But when I woke the blood was gone For a flash I'd seen the hope I peddled In The White Beyond So write the song you need to hear Write it on the palm of your hand When the world is drowned in flame Write something you can understand Go small 'Cause when you try to see it all you'll see The earth is radiantly suicidal The earth is radiantly suicidal So if there's any play in favor of survival It's go small Gonna build the room I need to live in Gonna plant a garden in my head And paint the rites of Lupercalia In the spot above my bed Write the song I need to hear Even if it amputates the sky Even if it's gone a second later It'll be okay 'cause I Go small 'Cause when you try to see it all you'll see The earth is radiantly suicidal The earth is radiantly suicidal And I have seen the cycle Walked a thousand miles Traced along the spiral Global to the tribal I have checked the vitals Virus to the viral All for no arrival Nor can I connive The death of Forty-Five To free the border child And grow the forest wild And all along the while I lay aside the lie That there's a mighty idol Somewhere in the primal Bid to find a rival This is my denial Breaking of the vial Laying down the rifle Taking in the quiet I'll Whisper to remind you The earth is radiantly suicidal The earth is radiantly suicidal So if there's any play in favor of survival Well if there's any play in favor of survival It's go small Go small
3.
Someday Lily 03:44
Fly through the city Make your mystery move when they're chasing you High up and windy Wear whatever feathers you choose The concrete committee Swallowed by the ground that turns to hyenas in crowns Someday Lily You'll be you, only you Don't go believing that here and now is how it's gonna stay I been thinkin' of another way I been gettin' rid of yesterday Don't go believing a hand that holds itself is a fist You've always been an optimist Remember, you've always been an optimist and Someday Lily, Someday Lily Nevermind, float away Don't look back I'm okay Someday Lily Someday really soon Let go your pity Let your talons do what what they've gotta do Spinning till we're dizzy Staring dead eyed at the blue Take down Achilles My only flaw's in exactly the shape of your jaw Someday Lily It'll all come true So much to say I can't begin I'm riddled with adrenaline The best, believe me This is for the best The best, the best This is for the best Someday Lily Someday really soon The best, go leave me Go and leave the nest Someday Lily Someday Lily Someday really soon
4.
You'll drown with me in your melted the ice caps The boiling sea washing over the White House You were asking for it, crying "I can't breathe" Well that's justice, or something like it, at least I will drown I will gladly gladly drown When the flood comes for you You'll drown with me, all who didn't believe me You heard the screams and turned up the TV Now what do you see? The water's rising You're clinging to me but I'm diving I will drown I will gladly gladly drown When the flood comes The flood comes I will drown I will sing the whole way down When the flood comes The flood comes for you Now look what you made me do I will gladly gladly drown I will sing the whole way down I will gladly gladly drown Pull you deep under the ground I will madly madly drown Take you motherfuckers down I will madly madly drown When the flood comes The flood comes for you
5.
Remember to breathe Cause you're in this for the long haul And I didn't do it today Cause maybe I'm wrong and isn't it great to be wrong? And I didn't do it today Cause maybe tomorrow I'll write you the perfect song Remember to breathe Cause you're in this for the long haul Like a tall tree I am pining To be taken out by the lightning Strike me I dare you I dare you Heaven hear me Like a mantis I am praying Out of habit without saying Anything For the steady wing and the bloody sting Of a kestrel come to snatch me And I didn't do it today Cause I don't want you to have to deal with the cops And I didn't do it today Cause I don't want you to think that love just stops Remember to breathe Cause you're in this for the long haul
6.
End Studies 03:18
I was taught the language of the old gods The last new child of the lost regimes I boarded up the school myself once I had learned the trade Of drawing down the curtain at the end of dreams The future won't belong to any fatherhood of gold The future's far beyond what they can think The future will be borderless and red and queer and bold For I was born to make my kind extinct End studies Bone up on end studies I'm the final fading echo of the final sounding note Of the symphony that killed the symphony I will be sealing up the trench where every shipwreck goes to sink Yes I was born to make my kind extinct Singing in the language of the first gods And no one's gonna sing like this again You'll have bodies made of hummingbird and cassowary But there's one thing you need before it can begin
7.
Permanent 03:58
Lady Be Good was a bomber US Air Force 1943 She crashed into the dunes of the Libyan desert And wasn't seen till '58 The crew had crawled to the north Starved and baked While a cold oasis lay behind them A couple of miles the other way Listen to the sand Listen to the ground There's always gonna be another way out I am your shade in the morning You are my shadow at dusk And the music our footprints write is permanent More permanent than sound Deborah Knapp, she and I were eighth grade together We were learning how to flirt and I remember How her friends all told me Ask her out and she'll fly over the moon But I didn't And she shot herself that June This is not where the song was going This is not what I meant to write But all at once the worm is hatched The apple turns and the orchard dies And your heart is full something Thick and uninvited The fever of another heart Hatching deep inside it Let the violins forgive their bows And the marching drums forgive the drummer Let the song forgive the singer Let love forgive the lovers No need to be good now
8.
I'll pay no mind to the scorpion Perched and poised on my shoulder I'm not the kind to heed a warning And as I'm gazing into you I think you're fearless too The door is wide to let the storm in But you don't flinch when it gets colder And in this chill something is forming We feel the shiver of the wind And when we hear the rain begin Reality is shaking Reality is wringing its hands Cause we've run beyond its radius Reality's afraid of us Watch 'em now Reality will cave to demands Darling, we are dangerous Reality's afraid of us And you shall have all that you need A cave with every sort of seed We lost track of all our damage So what's another sting or body frozen When every scar is our advantage? And if we've already died What's the turning of a tide? Nothing. I'll say it plain as I can manage Nothing's planned; nothing's chosen We simply took our names and vanished Now we happen through our eye Count to one and say goodbye Reality is shaking Reality is wringing its hands Cause we've run beyond its radius Reality's afraid of us Watch 'em now Reality will cave to demands Darling, we are dangerous Reality's afraid of us And it's breaking Retreats and disbands Nothing more than clay to us Reality's afraid of us Watch it go Giving up the ghost of a chance Darling, we are dangerous Reality's afraid of us
9.
Plant a tree Take a walk Become the wild Build a fire Keep a lighthouse Pet a cat Bake a cake Write a poem Forget a language Leave no trace Be like lightning Go to sleep Break a rule Sew a button Sing a song Enjoy a seduction Brew some coffee Taste your blood Swat a fly Call a friend Scrawl some graffiti Count the stars Remember a detail Whisper a secret Learn to vanish
10.
Now you're out of the picture And the picture is off the wall And the walls are gone from the temple And temple is gonna fall And the fall surrenders to winter And the winter lays waste to the land And the land sinks deep into nothing And it's nothing we can understand But somehow the tigers came back from the dead Hurrah hurrah hurrah And somehow the century was all in your head Hurrah hurrah hurrah When I hurtled the spear it was a million-to-one Hurrah hurrah hurrah But from the mountaintop I took down the sun Hurrah hurrah hurrah And they paint you back into the picture And the picture goes viral online In a world where the virus is really the world Where burning dogs laugh this is fine So be the red-hot miracle among cosmonauts Be the haunting of the launching pad Finally, finally it's here: Your excuse to go permanently mad So grab the biggest rock you can find Hurrah hurrah hurrah And go pulping the century out of your mind Hurrah hurrah hurrah And scream I am absolute zero Yes I am absolute zero Scream I am absolute zero Hurrah hurrah hurrah And I celebrate Democracy's slightly immortal So we can take a little risk And this'll do wonders for business Said the snakecharmer to the basilisk Now I am out of the picture That was once worth a thousand words Where there once wept a thousand people There now fly a thousand birds Come on, celebrate

about

THE BIRDWATCHER'S GUIDE TO ATROCITY
a 2020 album by Seeming
with ten ways to survive until tomorrow

Menacing but vulnerable. Furious but intimate.

Co-produced with renowned avant-garde percussionist Sarah Hennies, The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity shines eerie light through the cracks of life under capitalism. In effortless accents of chamber pop, postpunk, and clattering synthpop, the album radiates political revolt, personal remembrance, and disarming compassion. Never before has Seeming's post-anthropocene futurity been more appropriate.

Highlights of the record's tightly-wound 37-minutes include:
• the harrowing tempo experiment of opener "The Fates"
• a lush plea against disappearance in "Remember to Breathe"
• frantic pop singles in "Go Small" and "Someday Lily"
• the industrial banger "End Studies"
Seeming is the project of Alex Reed, with Aaron Fuleki. They had previously been in the band ThouShaltNot. Alex is the author of a 33 1/3 book as well as Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music.

For fans of Low, Depeche Mode, Chelsea Wolfe, Hurts, Einstürzende Neubauten, Twin Shadow, Emma Ruth Rundle, IAMX, Leonard Cohen, ANOHNI, HEALTH.

__________________

The 2-CD release contains an entire bonus LP, MONSTER

1. Be Like Lightning
2. You Rang
3. Monster
4. I Recognize You
5. Radically
6. Grief
7. Quiet as the Dead
8. Niagara Falls
9. Something Desperate

10. Doomsayer (FIRES mix)
11. Go Small (Big mix)

credits

released August 21, 2020

This profile is managed by the folks at Artoffact Records. If you order from here your email will be added to their mailing list, but that's what you always wanted, right?

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Seeming Ithaca, New York

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SEEMING:

post-gothic
post-human
post-everything

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