-
81 times to the sound of my heart beating
Like the wings of a caged dove
Feel it rise as you start breathing
Shivers down your body arched for love
Other men they'd lie to you but I want to feel deep inside of you
To the sacred place she gave life to you
From a cowards rib he divided you
Come fall with me
Embrace our reality
As we end I know heaven adores me now
I sing loud, I sing loud
Beautiful friend you don't know me now
& I'm proud, I am proud
If you want it ; pray
With will you will find a way
Come form with me
Transcend our duality
Like the dance oh a shooting star baby
We are in a state of transformation
Spread eagle until you tear apart baby
Show me visions of utopia
The truth is I never
Believed what you worshipped
Its part of the process
You have life just know this
Come fall with me
Embrace our reality
As we end I know heaven adores me now
I sing loud, sing loud
Beautiful friend, you don't know me now
& I'm proud, I am proud
If you want it; pray
With will you will find a way
Come form with me
Transcend our duality
-
I Am Putting This Fake Face On
& I’m Fixing This Weave Right
assembling The Mask That Hides
A Cocktail Of Emotion
Behind Faithful Devotion
Beneath a gauze of laced desire
I tread softly in 9-inch heels
And I sink down into your chest
A knifed stiletto
None of this is for decoration
Thru all I’ve spoken
All I’ve awoken
Still, you don’t understand me
You don’t understand
Baby if you come too soon
I’ll choke out the breath of light
I do this because I trust you with creation
But I will abort your dedication
A serpent coils around my neck
As pisces swims up and down
Martini and misanthropy is what I live for
The only thing that keeps me from going insane
There’s a wolf inside of me
I feel it clawing at my insides
Its time for you to leave
You best start running
I feel blood lust coming
A hearts not open until its broken
Still, you don’ t understand me
You don’t understand
You don’t understand me
You don’t understand
Kali’s invocation, bunny’ initiation
Thru all I have spoken
All I have awoken
Still, you don’t understand me
You don’t understand
You don’t understand me
You don’t understand
-
I see him dive towards me
Through an angelic canopy
And when he sounds patience breath
He pours himself into my lungs, my savior has come
What's luck?
What's luck got to say to questions of fate, my love?
For I've been tryin' my best to keep, keep up above
And I'd be lyin' if I said... never questioned what it's worth
'Cause I'm tryin', I'm tryin', but I'm dyin'
I feel life break beneath the waves
But won't let them hold me
No, won't let them hold me down, no more
I breathe the breath of light
See her rise with beauty
Indifferent to mortality
Holding my severed wrists
Like a mountain made to fall
She collapses in a motion to drown me
And I wouldn't take this breath
If he hadn't dove down and found me
For I've been tryin' my best to keep, keep up above
And I'd be lyin' if I said... never questioned what it's worth
'Cause I'm tryin', I'm tryin', but I'm dyin'
I feel life break beneath the waves
But won't let them hold me
No, won't let them hold me down
No, won't let them hold me
No, won't let them hold me down
It's all I got
(Iron walls of waves are breakin' over me)
But it's enough to breathe the dyin' light of love
(Iron walls of waves are breakin' over me)
And it's enough to breathe the dyin' light of love
(Iron walls of waves are breakin' over me)
And it's enough to breathe the dyin' light of love
(Iron walls of waves are breakin' over me)
But won't let them hold me
No, won't let them hold me down
No, won't let them hold me
No, won't let them hold me down
-
I dreamt I was different
A feather's weight of innocence
Bound by life in a golden cage
Inhale indecision
Smoke chokes the words to express myself
Breathe out the mind and you shall see
Focus thy anarchy
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
You know I never wanted anybody else
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
You know I never wanted anybody else
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
(I have never felt so insecure and I resent my body)
You know I never wanted anybody else
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
(That betrays desire to come back to you)
You know I never wanted anybody else
Smokes ascension
Upon most high smokes ascension
Upon most high smokes ascension
But nothing's changed, the path remains the same
You ain't got no self-respect
What did you expect?
The world that you project, it's only for you
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
You know I never wanted anybody else
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
You know I never wanted anybody else
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
(I have never felt so insecure and I resent my body)
You know I never wanted anybody else
C'mon, baby, respect yourself
(Betrays desire to come back to you)
You know I never wanted anybody else
Ascension
Upon most high smokes ascension
Upon most high smokes ascension
Seems so close, yet so far away
Ascension
Seems so close, yet so far away
Ascension
-
Look to your window and tell me what you see
Someone painted our future bleak, tied our hands with yesterday
The present lost in a repetition of constructed memory
Another faceless civilian caught in a tedious conspiracy
I pray these visions don't come true
I pray they are watching over you, but I know they're not
I see a black sun rising
I see a black sun rising
I see a black sun rising, overhead
How long have I been laying here watching shadows upon the wall?
Life cast by a faded flame, the only real I recall
Did I drift reading Daniel's book? Did I wake to an angel's call?
All life must fall before another world can be born
I see a black sun rising
I see a black sun rising
I see a black sun rising, overhead
My vision is faded, I can not see
Burnt-out ashes of prophecy
Are there angels watching me
With their compassionate gaze so patiently
I know there’s not
I see a black sun rising
I see a black sun rising
I see a black sun rising, overhead
-
The night that I found you's the trappings of fate
Stop speaking in cliché, you're all that I hate
If you lie on me, if you lie on me, I'll disappoint you
I'm not the one in your fantasy, my mind's barbed with a lifetime's repression
Singing this life is what you make of it
Can see it your eyes if you are faking it
We won't survive if you've forsaken it
Stop letting go
Did I take our lives and exploited our love for my self-serving game?
A war fought but never won, love hates what you've become
Tomorrow, I'll be forgotten, we'll go back to how we were before
After all that's said and done, like the quiver of a loaded gun
Love Hates what you become
I thought you were the one to take my blues away
It's a passing tide, I'm not your enemy
Stop tryna play this tough guy, it's not how you say
I'm on your side
Singing this life is what you make of it
Can see it your eyes if you are faking it
We won't survive if you've forsaken it
Stop letting go
I know you can't complete me, I know this void will forever be
A war fought but never won, love hates what you become
And you, my greatest longing, the best time I have ever learned
After all that's said and done, like the quiver of a loaded gun
Love Hates what You Become.
So, come on, make my heart beat faster
Won't you set my soul on fire?
Come on, make my heart beat faster
Won't you set my soul on fire?
Come on, make my heart beat faster
Won't you set my soul on fire?
-
There is no one around, I can be myself
Step out my mind, pass no judgment
It's silent here, the sacred sound of a mountain
Serenity says, now that we are alone
She'll show me her ways, disconnect from it all
No words to hear
The silence amplifies our love
The silence amplifies our love
The silence amplifies our love
The silence amplifies our love
Our love, our love
That night she came to me in a foreign dream
Lioness sleeping upon wounded knees
Serenity whispers her baptist song
The river's revelation keep moving on
Return to the ground, dust to the earth
Life's celebration of temporal worth
Nothing to fear
The silence amplifies our love
The silence amplifies our love
The silence amplifies our love
The silence amplifies our love
Our love, our love
-
I can see through your smile
Now I have seen all your ways and I am knelt down beside you
At night, when you lay
The light of distraction plays across your face
Swipes right in satisfaction
What's left but my untimely fall from grace?
A savage messiah
Whose crown of thorns hangs a barbwire snake
A social pariah
Was born on my knees, I won't buckle 'til I break
You gentrified my birthright
Commoditised my people in a cultural genocide
Woman, bring me my shotgun
I'ma liberate these facile lives
Lord, forgive them for they know not what they're doing
Lord, forgive them for they know not what they've done
You know I am rightful in my mortal judgment
Lord, knows I'm the righteous one
I'm the righteous one, I'm the righteous one
We all have it coming
In the end, we get what we deserve
Me, I'm as separate
From this ashen tree as the firebird
Lord, forgive them for they know not what they're doing
Lord, forgive them for they know not what they've done
You know I am rightful in my mortal judgment
Lord, knows I'm the righteous one
Woman, bring me my shotgun
And I'm the righteous one, and I'm the righteous one
I want to lay you down and suffer you, baby
I want to see them devil's laying in your soul
I want to lay you down and suffer you, baby
I want to see them devil's laying in your soul
-
How much must we taint?
Before we overcome?
The mind that betrays its children
Of life before it's begone
We need to elevate!
Rise above these given
These given laws of reality
Luhva's singing stand up
Take my hand
Through all that comes
Promise you will not let go
This world we know
Is a volcano about to blow
The first crash should have been a warning
To the new dark age that is dawning
Incandescent we sing
I never found the words to a life affirming love song
(Words are empty to this sensual thirst for life that I feel)
We couldn't work it out
We'd sooner live in doubt
We couldn't work it out
It's screaming louder than this voice can shout
Everbody singing fuck the world
Close your eyes, we will be alright
All the lovers singing this our world
Do we stand, take up the fight?
Everbody singing fuck the world
Close your eyes, we will be alright
It's alright?
It's alright?
Tell me we're gonna be alright
The first crash should have been a warning
To the new dark age that is dawning
Incandescent we sing
My generation's burning
Still we sing our love songs
Thirst for distraction like survival in the desert of the real
My generation's burning
Still we sing our love songs
Words are empty to this sensual thirst for life that I feel
Everbody singing fuck the world
Close your eyes, we will be alright
All the lovers singing this our world
Do we stand, take up the fight?
Everbody singing fuck the world
Close your eyes, we will be alright
It's alright?
It's alright?
Tell me we're gonna be alright
We couldn't work it out
We'd sooner live in doubt
We couldn't work it out
It's screaming louder than this voice can shout
-
You're Feeling Like You Heard This All Before Like Every Word's a Conspiracy of Cliche
White Boy Strumming on His Guitar Has Nothing Relevant in His Heart to Say
To This World of Money and Numbers Where We Reduce Every Choice
To a Binary Between Boredom and Hate
No You Don't Want to Live That Life Open Your Mind,
Open Your Borders
Stand Naked to Your Nature's Embrace
I'm Appalled by the Sound Coming From the Radio
Has Life Tamed Our Soul, What Happened to Rock & Roll
Where the Rhythm Flows Over You
What's Up With These People?
Why Can't They Satisfy Me?
Must We Ask Less of People?
And More of Machines?
They Tell Me
You Are the One
The Last Man at the End of History
You Have the Choice
Like Every Man Condemned to Be Free
Do I Cut Myself Off or Live by the Rhythm?
Simmer Down
Nothing Lasts Forever
Break Like Waves in the Sea
As the River Floods the Land
Can't Tame the Wild in Me
What's Up With You People?
You're More Than Machines
Sad Eyed Saviour
It Aint So Hard to Be Happy
Well for Heave's Sake
There's No Need to Be So Sad!
You Are the One
The Last Man at the End of History
You Have a Choice
Like Every Man Condemned to Be Free
Do I Cut Myself Off or Live by the Rhythm?
Simmer Down and Stand Up
Feel the Rhythm Rock Regardless
Simmer Down and Stand Up
For the Wild, for the Wild
Silence Is the Song of Your Deepest Nature Where Life Transcends Your Shop Bought Personality
I Look Around Me and See So Many People
Who Seem to Have Lost Their Basic Humanity
We Rise and Fall Like the Rhythms of the Ocean Only the Fool Would Weep
Trying to Understand What a Wave Means
So Why Do We Live in Mind Constructed Cages of Self Persecution
Life Is an Eternal Revolution
Chaos Reigns Supreme
For the Wild, Wild, Wiiiilllldddd
Simmer Down and Stand Up
Feel the Rhythm Rock Regardless
Simmer Down and Stand Up
For the Wild, for the Wild
Lost Under Heaven return with “Love Hates What You Become”, a startling, thought-provoking record shot full of incisive social commentary that captures the couple at their most musically raw and visceral.
The album was written in the year of 2017 following the couple’s relocation to Manchester, England, Ellery’s home town. They took on an apartment in the city’s Northern Quarter overlooking a bustling junction, which Ebony soon christened: “a crossroads of desolation.” She adds: “upon moving here I was a taken back by the real desperate (drinking) culture; a wake-work-drink-sleep repeat existence that seems so void of any purpose, When we lived in that place, every weekend was like watching over some circus of Dickensian squalor. With the live band off the road, it became like being stuck in some relentless purgatory.”
Through the gates of that purgatory came songs which address the world’s multitude of obstacles and dares to dream of an ascendant path beyond…
The genesis of “Love Hates What You Become” began in the summer of 2016 with ‘Black Sun Rising’, Hoorn’s ecologically focused graduation work at Amsterdam’s prestigious Rietveld Art Academy. “It was an immersive installation,” she explains. “Presenting a potential future where pollution and the collapse of the ecosphere has got to such a point that humanity are forced to exist in detached synthetic enclosures; where all is an imitation of the real, watching the shadows of the black sun”
The original work took the form of a prose poem that Ellery later repurposed as lyrics for the song that now appears as the centrepiece to the new record. “By a creepin’ coincidence,” Ellery adds, “whilst we were recording the album in Los Angeles, those alt-right actions in Charlottesville were all over the news, we found that the black sun also was a prominent Nazi symbol, a crest that is currently used as a more palatable version of a swastika. So the song found this added poignancy, with the black sun rising referring to the unsettling return of fascism in the public consciousness. There’s an inescapable ominous shadow cast over these strange days we find ourselves.”
The band had travelled to America to record with producer John Congleton, known for his Grammy-winning work with St. Vincent, Swans, Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Rós.
“We heard rumour that John likes to keep it raw, strip things back and allow the song to speak for itself,” Ellery says. “After the long, meticulous process of our first record I was drawn to the idea of returning to something direct, working fast and committing to ideas: I wanted to be pushed, made uncomfortable, strip away any lofty pretensions. We felt he was the man to do it.”
Congleton introduced the band to Swans drummer Thor Harris, who plays on the record. “We were without a drummer or a real band,” explains Ellery. “It was just me and Ebony, I’d written mostly on guitar and piano in order to limit the number of things I had to play around with. I just concentrated on writing the songs rather than making a sound. We turned up in LA with that as our starting point, this collection of demos that I’d sent through”
Those demos included some of the most accomplished song writing of his career to date, such as momentous album closer ‘For the Wild’. “I started writing that song years ago almost as a pastiche of trying to write real this rock’n’roll saviour,” he reminisces. “The rock’n’roll revolutionary feels such a culturally irrelevant cliché now, we’re living in a mechanised world seemingly indifferent to the longings of the human soul, and the chaos eyed depths of nature. I was playing with those thoughts, trying to embody some Dionysian affirmation of life; I grew up loving Patti Smith, Jimi Hendrix; In my heart I always wanted to make music that moved me in this way. Certainly on our first record I had ended up almost rejecting this urge, trying to aspire to something more conceptual, more about the intellect rather than the heartfelt experience of life. ‘For the Wild’ became a talisman of this return”
Another striking difference since their debut record is the prominence of Ebony’s vocals, notable on the formidable ‘Bunny’s Blues’, where she takes the lead. “With that song I present an alter ego,” she explains. “Creating this character of Bunny began with a performance piece I did back in Amsterdam. She became a playful tool to confront how male-dominated society attempts to control both women and nature without having any real understanding or respect for their being and innate power.” The scream-along chorus lyric, “you don’t understand me!” is at once imbued with adolescent angst, whilst addressing the arrogant ignorance of patriarchal society.
The album was recorded at Sargent Recorders, in Los Angeles’ Historic Fillipinotown over three molten weeks in July 2017. The session began with “desert dry tequila hangovers hidden beneath stars and stripes shades” courtesy of the previous night’s Independence Day celebrations. “We had just landed, so were still in a slight backwards state from jet lag,” Ebony recollects. “We decided to break the ice diving straight into improvised takes of ‘Savage Messiah.’”
Quickly bonding with Thor’s idiosyncratic approach to rhythm, they managed to capture a coherent take within the first few hours. “I love the atmosphere John captured for this song,” Ellery laughs. “It feels like its living on the demented edge of its narrator’s world-view; the trials and tribulations of an absurd self-righteous megalomaniac- who of course has no reflection in me.”
“We spent the following weeks living in close quarters; sleeping above the studio, working long days then slipping out into the endless Los Angeles nights,” Ebony explains. “I enjoy this level of intense living but it takes its toll- I think you can hear the exhaustion in Ellery’s voice on ‘Post-Millennial Tension’ which in its way fits the world weary sentiment of the song.” A sprawling ballad that continually evolves from sparse piano to full blown orchestration, ‘Post-Millennium Tension’ takes inspiration for its title from Pre-Millennium Tension, the 1996 LP from Tricky - an artist whom the band note as a primary influence. “The song was written on the frustrations of our times – particularly those of the younger generation,” Ellery continues. “Through the internet people have gained an awareness of possibility but remain entrapped in the limitations of old. In my understanding, solutions to the world’s problems seem plentiful, yet we remain entrapped by our inability to act; held down by those manmade manacles - thus the lyric: “we couldn’t work it out, we’d sooner live in doubt.” There’s a futility to all.”
The band pause to insist that this record is not all doom and gloom; suggesting the bombastic opening track ‘Come’ is an electrifying mission statement. “The track deals with separation and unity; this duality is a recurrent theme to much of our work; and is most obviously symbolised by masculine and feminine energy coiling around each other in sexual embrace,” Ellery explains. “I have been a long-time admirer of everything Genesis Breyer P’ Orridge has created, and this song was directly inspired by her early work with COUM and then the later Pandrogyne with Lady Jaye… the desire to unite entirely with your lover into infinite bliss. I am interested in the androgynous nature of the Elohim; and certainly, writing and recording after Prince passed there was this desire to invocate the Purple one back into the world!”
…
After an intense period of work, the couple left Congleton in LA to mix the record, and set out on a contemplative experience in the desert. “We drove out to Joshua Tree for a few days,” remembers Roberts. “Driving endlessly into the middle of nowhere during a great thunderstorm. It’s an incredible landscape to be in the midst of a storm. It was a beautiful moment to just disconnect from everything and take a step back. We could not escape the feeling of Los Angeles as this fictitious city, dreamt into existence in a barren desert, slowly drying up, returning into the dust from which it came. Our time there was filled with all the glitter amongst dirt that entices the ego’s magpie eye; this sense of self-creation as a suit of armour to navigate an indifferent world, a multiplying hall of mirrors that reflects nothing but falsehood. It was this on this trip that we decided to title the record “Love Hates What You Become.”
Having returned to Manchester, the band are now preparing to play their new music live. “We’re essentially trying to keep it as straight up as possible, whilst maintaining the sonic ambition of the productions,” says Ellery. “Since we last toured, Ebony, along with singing, learnt to play bass. Allowing us to play as a three-piece.” They are now joined by drummer and Ableton-manipulator Ben Kelly.
Ebony goes further to discuss her blossoming role as Director of the band’s visuals: “Over the past year I have had some perfect opportunities to begin realising ideas I have had from the outset of the project; from developing a VR work to capturing my beloved gialio aesthetic on 16mm. The dream was always to create audio/visual experiences. The early live shows ended up being more traditional for the sake of functionality; but now we have the made the right connections and collaborators to really start to explore the visual possibilities.”
Ellery adds, “this has always been the aspiration. I don't really see the album as important, just ammunition for the live show. We are making things happen on our own, and working in a self-reliant way. In a way, that’s all I ever aspire to, the life of an actualized artist.”
With “Love Hates What You Become”, Lost Under Heaven continue to establish themselves as courageous and innovative young band, hungry to create and perform their art.