ZANG TUUMB TUM DISCOGRAPHY “…or the imagination”

12 thoughts on the language of others


I can hear her breathing
The air running over her vocal chords, shaping the words like wet clay
Spinning on the wheel to say something I’ve not heard before
I can hear her breathing

I can hear her breathing
Just a single note does something
Sound does something without thinking, don’t you think
Just a single note

I can hear her breathing
Just a single note does something
How do they feel about it: the hammers
A striker’s mission in mid-flight

The piano: a wonderful infernal piece of furniture
Kafka might dream it up
An embroidery machine of torture
Tinguely might invent it from an abandoned loom

Break it up with an axe
Cover it with flowers
Put it out in the rain
How do they feel about it: the hammers

I can hear her breathing
Just a single note does something
How do they feel about it: the hammers

This looks comfortable
Let’s sit down here
Melody is an empty chair, scratched into a square of orange paint
It looks comfortable

I can hear her breathing
Just a single note does something
How do they feel about it: the hammers
This looks comfortable

It’s such a pleasure to touch her guitar strings after the straight-backed enlightenment logic of the keyboard
Like ditching the wig and growing your hair long
Slouch required
It’s such a pleasure

I can hear her breathing
Just a single note does something
How do they feel about it: the hammers
This looks comfortable

It’s such a pleasure to touch her guitar strings
Do great songs need to be sung or can they just be sold

Great songs marker a zeitgeist, a territory
And an empire in rise or fall
It’s Shubert one year and The Beatles the next
Selling something that couldn’t be said is what a good song needs

I can hear her breathing
Just a single note does something
How do they feel about it: the hammers
This looks comfortable

It’s such a pleasure to touch her guitar strings
Do great songs need to be sung

Perhaps it’s a bit early to talk about this, but I love a coda
It’s that moment of freedom at the very end, when all the work’s done, the astronet’s been breached and we could take off in the whoosh, in the spaceship of our emotions
Perhaps it’s a bit early

Perhaps it’s a bit early to talk about this, it’s the false ending now
The curtain’s down and there seems to be nothing here but the recordings
Breakfast is over, but they’re setting the table for lunch
It’s the false ending now

Perhaps it’s a bit early to talk about this, it’s the false ending now
Behind every song is a memory of another one and a future waiting to be imagined
If you dig into any song long enough you’ll find one or ‘the other’ place to plant a garden
Behind every song is a memory

Perhaps it’s a bit early to talk about this, it’s the false ending now
Behind every song is a memory
The only white noise on this recording is that reverb distortion there… did you hear it
The oblivion of black calling
But no need to worry
It’s only white noise

Perhaps it’s a bit early to talk about this, it’s the false ending now
Behind every song is a memory
The only white noise on this recording
If we were wood we would be puppets wouldn’t we
But aren’t we all sounding boards of a kind
As if were wood

Perhaps it’s a bit early to talk about this, it’s the false ending now
Behind every song is the memory of the only white noise on this recording
When we were wood

A dance danced by a man, with another man, while he is waiting to dance with a woman who is already dancing with another man
A dance

The dance
As if we were wood
A dance
The only white noise on this recording
A dance
Behind every song is the memory of a dance

It’s the false ending now
A dance
Perhaps its a bit early to talk about this
A dance
Do great songs need to be sung or are they just a dance

It’s such a pleasure to touch her guitar strings
A dance
This looks comfortable
A dance
How do they feel about it: the hammers
A dance

Just a single note does something
A dance
I can hear her breathing
A dance