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lyrics

A Great Creaking

He heard his breathing,
his heart thudded his chest.
It was like the roar of a retreating tide.
There was a great creaking.
He thought he heard clapping and shouting.
He seemed to be listening underwater.
The noise of wind and rushing
and the blood pounded in his ears.

Outside thunder fell out of the sky
with a muffled bass thump
from passing car speakers.
Murmured voices,
sheep bells,
jangled in the distance.

There was movement and noise everywhere.
Formless static became clear voices
speaking in a foreign tongue
before the rotor noise drowned them.
And then with a loud
metal-on-metal tat-tat-tat-tat-tat
Then abruptly,
there came a loud boom
thump-thump,
blaring air horns and shouting.

Then two loud, puncture-like booms echoed out,
reverberating off the walls.
The noise of police sirens,
the slowing swish of a car,
the rotor noise SHOOOOOOM!!
Thawump! Thawump! Thawump! Thawump! Thawump!
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat
a humming sound and a groaning clatter
corrugated tin rattled,
a scratching sound,
Ka-chunk!
Zzzzzzzzz!
people yelling
the window rattled,
someone knocked,
the telephone rang
the high voice crackled through the speaker
with the odd sentence of English.

Shush.
What was that?
What was what?
I heard it. Something
I didn't hear anything.

Our map showed a line of pylons
running across to the four rectilinear columns
set in the middle of the curve.
It would've been easy going
travelling in a straight line,
like a waterfall.

Rain drummed on the outside window
and hundreds of tiny engines
were painted glistening white
in the same fashion.
The sounds of two TV sets
rushed down into wide body of water.
They emerge inside the ravine
somewhere where space is being twisted.
When I get the scene done

Anyway,
perhaps a dozen even larger television monitors
squeeze through the gap
for six hours today,
between the hours of three o'clock
and nine o'clock this morning.

credits

from The Pre​-​War Noise Encryption Standard, released February 3, 2023
Words and music by Nigel Ayers

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Nocturnal Emissions Cornwall, UK

Nocturnal Emissions' Nigel Ayers has continued to work with a strong underground of cult support, avoiding music industry fashions, and following his own creative path he concentrated on creating a strong sense of a wilderness identity through sound.

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