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1.
Treatise 00:48
Nobody knows anything. They don’t know that they know nothing! But I can’t live by a vehement tenet of sick agitation can I? It’s been so long – I’ve carried it for years. I’m so tired of being angry, and worried about my weight and how I look and what’s cool, who’s right, and who’s wrong and where to stand. Is it the left, the far left, the extreme left? I’m worn out. It’s dismal. I’m tired of affectation. Maybe when it’s all worn out and expunged it’ll be like a purification – not this putrification – it’s an abomination. It’s attrition. But not by my volition. Not by my volition. It’s not by my volition!
2.
Lazarus 03:39
You get a feeling that there’s some dissatisfaction, that here’s something not right, it’s unfocused, and you can’t place it. It’s unsettled and disturbed. She took to the stairs, closing the door. without saying a word, she was there for you, dressed in pink and blue, there for them. Her children had left home. This strange little girl, all alone in the world – all grown and eager never to be alone. Marianne. You liked to play. You played for yourself – you played for the children. You taught strength and lived for the community, but the community overlooked you. (725mg per 100ml of blood) And one day, I reached out and you said your mother was sick. You would tend to the needy like a specialty – it was so heartwarming to see. This tall blonde woman from somewhere overseas;. Always complicated and unsure, but hiding her addiction under a sea of neuroses. The irony of it all. This bag for life. A bag for life? A bag with death, it carried no smell. You couldn’t hear it, you couldn’t see it, and so she made her way that day - onto the common, a sight she’d seen so many times before, A place she cared for. A place where she could wrap fabric around a tree. And that’s where she found her freedom – in that bag. It’s the nature of rehabilitation. You didn’t expect to die – I don’t see how you could have known, but I didn’t – I didn’t realise that you were so alone…and so in need. How can we see? When you’re wrapped up and cloaked in a mask of invincibility. (725mg per 100ml of blood). We didn’t see you for years, we didn’t see you for years. We never heard from you again, there were no responses to emails, telephones, letters, nothing. But I wish you well. You’re the regret from that place we met that I’ll never forget.
3.
In a freezing service station, I’m nauseous with my own impatience, teeth chattering and body jerking with petulance, disdain and anger and frustration. Lost people grasping cards and plates, queuing for food and hate, lost to a place that hates them. But the WiFi’s good and the coffee’s sickening, And I sneer at these fellow excretions wanting to vomit all over them as though they were nothing but their parental secretion. Hold it in. Breathe it in. Hold back. Genuflect. Genuinely reflect that nothing that you think will come to that. There’s no time for absent ramblings, get it down with meter and timings, sampling as much as you can absorb before the clouded fug of words becomes dispersed by the sandwich carrying herd. Sitting. Sipping. Give me some. Give me something other than your shitting daily bread and useless thoughts Hands up for cheap vases. Make a difference when you stop and polish up and get noshed off in the toilets! Gagging, shagging, fucking Parma violets. Like ham. You gammon man. Woman. Fraility. This Fragility. Thou art broken, busted down and out. And now the lines are sounds.
4.
Chasing Amy 04:20
Lucid dreaming. Of who we are. Of where we’ve been. And who we are. Where we’ve been. Who you are. Lucid dreaming. You send me photographs of who we’ve been. You said you wouldn’t make it past 30, and I agreed. I didn’t think we’d make it this far. I don’t know why, I suppose we were stoned. Join a club. Be invincible. Be powerful. Famous. Fulfil our dreams. But they’re just dreams: made of air. Something sweet, that soured. But, we believed that we could have hours. And just drink for days and smoke for years. But you wouldn’t touch it - with your lungs, they couldn’t take it. That was fair. You made up for it. With that hair. Y’know? Long hair like Sebastian Bach. On the day that we met you were at the bar with a bass on your back. And I looked at you and I thought, “Yeah, this man, y’know, he’ll talk back.” You looked like the sort of man that I knew when I left home. But there we were, somewhere new, wandering around, drunk on fumes of hope and ambition. But that ambition ceased. Yours did too. In different ways. I never knew what you aspired to – what you reached for. Chasing Amy. And where she went. But you never opened up too much. You kept it hidden. We sensed - secrets – something all too dark, and those secrets went unsaid in shadows I thought would never end, but it’s got to end. Everything does. Remember that time? Not all the times. Times get blurry and I find some times too hard to recall – too painful. Especially when things went wrong, and they did go wrong, as they will over two decades of friendship. Man, we did things that we can’t do no more. It can be too much. I even struggle to think of these things any more. But it’s being brought to bear. And it’s crushing to think about. I don’t wanna face it. I know you’re facing it alone, cos that’s what you do. You never let anyone else face it for you. You stand silent. Don’t complain. Not with all the pills, devices, scans, hospitals. Failing organs. Mate, I can’t even explain. You scraped me up after excessive seasons. Helped me when I didn’t know I needed it. And I’d do the same for you. But time is this common enemy – sometimes it’s just the air that does for you. Sometimes it’s just living – like when you cough so much you put your back out. Shit. You think it’s an embarrassment, and all people can see are symptoms, but I know – we know. And all I need you to know, is that we’ve been here. Will always be here. Even when we’re not here, you are still here. Always here. There’s no rudder. No guide, no other, no steer. And yeah even at your wedding, I couldn’t control myself. Fell over a table, had my shirt ripped and made a fool of myself. But that’s what I do. That’s what I did. You did it too – in other ways. Like the shit that you like. The scripts you aspired to write. The long warm nights spending, watching Lara drown on Playstation. Man you sleep for hours. Wake up. Wake up. But you just won’t wake up. You lucid dream. That’s what you say. You lucid dream. And it’s Rice Krispies with no milk, sitting topless on the stained sofa. And we’ll play all day with nothing to do and everything to say. Hack in the park. Pub. Drink till we’re sick from laughs. Want for change, and want for the right diagnosis for you: a consultant that can change the truth that your lungs are filling, and I can’t see anything amongst these concrete buildings of Enfield. From where you are by the South Westerly club. In that Essex band. I remember the mascara, man. And Thailand. Christ. Sandy feet, helicopter, Bangkok, life-support. Short shocks. Consistent liver failure, and no transplant available. What does it mean? I can’t even glean a semblance of truth or meaning or understanding of this. But…who we are is all I have. So lucid dream of who we are. Of where we’ve been. And who we are. You lucid dream and you come and find me. After dark.
5.
Judas 03:24
Oh mate! I know you’ve got an opinion, you don’t gotta shout about it. But you don’t even have to tell the world how fucking passionate you are about it. I mean, just cos you feel, it doesn’t make you right. You seem you’re not a ball of senses wihth experiences learned from fights. Fights outside the pub? Daily. In the long run. Daily. I mean, we keep coming back to the same points until words fail me…and everyone. I know there’s no solutions just arbitrary intellects masquerading as evolution. I don’t believe we have the answers. Who does? I don’t. I trust science and Doctors – cos they’re kinda woke. And they work tirelessly to inform opinion and watch who say that we don’t need them. I don’t need Gove or his dumb wife, I leave ‘em. But the people grasp at power and the money and we watch. We listen, read, absorbing words and opinions like what? A tweet? Tweeting? Writing letters? I’m gonna sign a petition and complain? Mate, do something else, yeah? Just make them afraid. Use your fucking brain. I don’t believe them. Don’t believe a word. I said I don’t believe a politician that don’t trust science. Well. Maybe trust Lucas if you feel that bias. If they want that power to achieve then believe that they can do anything and it’s all about deceit. Social media. Retweet and like. Retweet and like. Like. Like . Like. Like. Die. Hype.
6.
Drones 03:11
When people are deposed, and rejected by a place that they never possessed, and taken away from homes, they’re moved around like nothing more than Amazon drones, flying over neighbourhoods. Looked upon like disgraced youth, there’s no place here for you, no place home, no place anywhere, you got no identity even if you’re full-grown or if you’re small, immaculate and irrelevant, there’s no way back home so just leave it alone, and take your chances somewhere down that road. I remember my Dad telling me that when he was a kid there was a Civil War, and in a cupboard he hid, when the army came storming in and murdered his brother in front of his very eyes. I don’t understand how he survived the damage that he saw. And then my Grandfather killed a man around the time of partition when some men came to the village to rape and murder children. The rape and murder of children. The rape and murder of children. The rape and murder of children: there ‘aint enough Daily Hate, cockroaches, drowned rats, sunk lifeboats, and rafts. But where are the women and children? Where are the women and children? There’s Muslamic rape gangs coming over here to pillage our women and children. It’s a concept hardened by plain fact – facts that there are cunts around every corner, there’s no dismissing that, but to say that it’s the fault of everyone just turns us back. Back to a future where there’s no comfort from teachers, especially if you can’t even trust who your kids are being sent to. And I watch the swampland crossings into lands that I have known, and I’m hearing people I’ve grown up with saying they should make that land their home, but then the world does nothing, and it gets beyond shocking, because the Muslim’s dead. The Muslim’s dead. In fact it makes them glad to think that they’re not even represented and that’s exactly what Islamic State practically presented as an option – it’s what that they were offering, and it’s what they’re seeing through, and it’s terrorists, not the people that you should be looking to. And the UN watches. And the UN watches. And the UN watches paralysed by indecision, and as soon as the EU does something, we like to cut ourselves off from it. So it doesn’t help that we’re complicit, complacent, explicit. We don’t give a fuck. Just let ‘em die. Just let ‘em die – just don’t bring em over here cos we got needs of our own. And we gotta feed our own. We got people in poverty, but poverty’s got its own relativity. But it doesn’t matter because those that matter don’t care if you never see real poverty when you live on the streets. Look at the state of the cities. I mean, look at the state of the cities! We got foodbanks cos families can’t even afford to eat. And I thought it was a joke. A sick joke made up by lazy people. Don’t let them go on benefits, don’t let them use the NHS. Don’t even fund those bodies enough, just keep focused on developing the wealth interest and gentrification and keeping the rich moving in from other countries, they’re OK : they bring values to our homes. They bring values to our homes.
7.
Malmaison 03:10
It’s raining somewhere...and the streets don’t glisten because they’re wet. We move like lobsters across a dead surface that we just can’t forget. And the bricks shoot high: cold, hard, eye-spy nothing but glass, concrete, life, sun-dried. Everything’s up. Moving, directional - implausible it once was. These pleasant dreams of tangos full of hard men, gripping fists of hair like a fumbled arrangement like they did when they were young - trying to uncover who they were then and what it meant. Why it mattered. Who she was. But the clatter of reality permeates the air and subculture’s squashed, until the monochrome appears. Because fashion isn’t dead; it’s a fascination. It’s a way of life for them that want to express their admiration - for the grey mask. Worn over white socks. It’s spitting rain in the spitting pain wondering who to fear most and it wasn’t me. Or anything or anyone that I could see. It’s something invisible, something felt, disguised. It’s something, anything that I can’t deny. It’s something that I can’t rely on. And I’m moving backwards through a mire, I’m moving forwards - I’m catching fire. And I wail at walls like threats that permeate ages. And I scream seven times from explaining that every effort was a cliché that became harder to maintain. Like a practice in The Shining and a collapse of all foundations, with memories resurfacing and I’m left with all that ego. So then there’s all this. And there’s nothing else to be proud of, but that’s all I’ve got to work with, and make myself an example of because that’s all anyone can do. To get a message through to…who? You? No-one. It goes unheard. These spoken words. Are unspoken words.

about

Four Thieves Vinegar is a project that grew out of two friends sparring over words and sound. Starting in early 2018, it was recorded long distance, with each musician reacting to each other in turn. Using guitar, double bass, computer and voice, this seven track EP creates a world of sonic extremes.

“…I remember my Dad telling me that when he was a kid, there was a Civil War, and in a cupboard he hid, when the army came storming in and murdered his brother in front of his very eyes. I don’t understand how he survived the damage he saw…”

Sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal the music takes the listener from the intimate experience of loss, through personal memories of childhood, to a narcotic fallout in a service station, all underpinned by a Dies irae motif from an imagined requiem.

“…It’s raining somewhere. The streets don’t glisten cos they’re wet. We move like lobsters across a dead surface we can’t forget…”

The first track Treatise, sets the tone with unhinged verse that spills over oscillating bass, before segueing into the poignant Lazarus. Burial Services, with its screaming Ebows and prepared piano backing a disturbing vocal, is an uncompromising contrast to the frank exploration of friendship that is Chasing Amy. Reflections on mortality, immigration, racism, and social media follow with Judas and Drones before Malmaison draws this first EP to a reflective close.

“…Retweet and like. Retweet and like. Like. Like. Like. Like. Die. Hype.”

credits

released April 6, 2018

'A visceral seven-track EP' Tom Robinson (BBC Radio 6)

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