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lyrics

Trespass
Taste as well as smell
the kinetically operated transmitter.
I got more data.
It is for the stone, not for you.
There's some files about a limp white thing
covered with algae,
blocking this signal to the council buildings.
The water weed barrier machine
had once stood seven feet high and twenty feet wide.
It dates back to the dark ages.
The machine stood for centuries
before it emptied itself out.
It was a much bigger aqueduct cavity
that lolled to one side,
exposing a rippling void,
the distant splash of a disengaging wormhole.
It marked a near ten mile long primeval water torrent
that had been built to run a rudimentary database
made out of bones.
It would be filled to the brim with oceans
to form oceans.
There would be hundreds of technicians
brought in to watch the deluge.
We have little understanding of the mechanisms they used
and psychologists babble
a bit too fast for me to follow.
There are too many voices.

There is still a way to play it.
A few minutes later,
the scientists flipped the light switch,
opened the first page and pointed to a diagram
of local trade routes.
This huge fiery figure
held a microphone expertly
in front of him.
We have to surface, he said,
Are you sure it's on? I say,
I have run three different scans
thinking of all the scientific questions.
then three more running another program,
but sometimes it's a struggle.
I've not been able to study them.
I will endeavour to bring them back with me.
Two of my books are actually missing
for my study
in broad daylight.
I've seen them wheeling about
and breaking free into the upper air beyond
I asked him what he meant
his voice on the mic a dull murmur.
He kept opening and closing his mouth
trying to speak.
Oh, no, no, no.
He was shaking.
When it was over,
he realized he had forgotten to press record.
No, no, no.

Some of the cars pulled off the tarmac
and onto a cow track
that stretched out
towards the green hilly countryside.
There were razors all over.
They chucked their debris out of the car,
crushed milk cartons and shielded boxes.
The column of protestors began to shuffle forward.

Thousands of people
cramming into disused warehouses
in abandoned scrubland.
The CCTV control room had been destroyed.
And now it made sense.
What do you think then?
This was about trespass in a muddy field.
These were the beginnings of the strongest dynamic ideas
and people,
tons of equipment had to be trucked in secretly
complicated pieces of kit,
weathered computers,
and a mutual proximity breaker switch,
an intricate web,
working with molecules
towards the front of the demo.

There were ways of sending a message.
The signal arrived
right there on the cow track
was the name of a local building firm:
No romance, no passion, no joy.

The driver sat in the driver's compartment,
hands on the copper adze
single frame video coverage
moved with a little gurgling noise
and with surprisingly smoother smoothness
he bent forward.
Peering at the screen,
Magnetic Herbie sat beside him,
the heat blistering his skin, grunted.
The camera grabbed every two seconds,
it recorded a sharp fragment of machinery
the size of a man's fist.

It was only a mirage,
but we can rebuild this machine.
He saw many mirages before he reached the woodland,
then spotting a gap,
toes scuffing the powdery sand,
he rejoined the march.

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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