Nika Aila States

my more aural project has a url of its own, now.

For you SF bay area folks:

This friday evening, May 11th, I will be at Actual Cafe in Oakland for an art opening featuring work by Japhy Riddle, Marlon Geller, Randal Roberts, and yours truly. And for those of you less inclined towards visual media, there will also be music by Mateo & Madeline, a duo comprised of two of my favourite bay area musicians (Mateo Lugo, of moontit, and Madeline Streicek),  and red steppes, a duo comprised of myself and Mr. Owen Adair Kelley. It will be food for the eyes and the ears (and also the belly, if you order something from Actual’s excellent kitchen). The doors’ll be open all day, and the live music starts at 8:00 PM sharp

song preservation society

mateo lugo

jessica karr

song preservation society

red steppes - tenderness

from a live set we played at Subterranean Arthouse in Berkeley a while back. you can download this and a couple other tracks over there on soundcloud, for free free free. lyrics are thus:

which one is the rube? 
in the eggy light, two shuddering spoons 
when i’m not warm and you’re not soothed 
which hand holds the distance? 
which hand holds the hollow moon?

you’re a fish in the road; 
the pickled gills go seizing at the stone. 
when they won’t swallow what won’t lead them home 
don’t make me your scavenger 
don’t call me your lucky crow

there’s the summer’s pall 
at the cattle gate, at the rattling wall 
and you dog, you bark before you balk 
you shout at the cloudy bank 
you shy when that bank decides to walk

but I go out in that soup, 
in the muddy bile and bruised chamomile bloom 
and I am sick with it, I am sick as you 
and that fog is a thicket 
that fog is a quiet, clicking womb

from the cancerous month 
with your shallow chest and my shivering lung 
comes a bad bad joke, but a pious one: 
that hymn we both bellowed 
at the quarry’s rim, in the gloaming going gone

Tenderness, you said - I need tenderness 
you said: for once, be bold 
be soft 
be close

Come down from your ghostly perch / silver poplar and congress of birch / Solemn bird, come down // Be a man who will not be cowed / with rough hands and a rubbery mouth / When one branch of the birch must be bowed, allow one to be bent and one to be proud // I take my sip from the fissured bell / I take what hits I can, and I raise my hell / Only time will tell who is free // You take your sip from the lion’s maw / You peck at his black lip and you steal his barbed tongue / See what strange, strange harm a small bird has done // Be a man who wil not be feared / with a nest in your great russet beard / with a flush on your chest and fierce cheer / and soft flesh where a feather once reared / Oh, my dear, be near // Bear away your gifts and your body of half-baked clay / Bear away your bottles of whistling beer / I am only a slip of myself just yet / You are only a feint frontier //

I forgot I’d recorded this. Then I remembered.

daniel wright, ethan glazer, & trevor bahnson