Polygon Sea by Alien Alarms
One of the most striking images during lockdown was of NASA employees celebrating their Mars landing in mission control with facemasks on: our planet is gripped by a pandemic and a climate crisis, but instead of being focussed on fixing those problems we were instead looking out to other worlds. This dissonance was reinforced by the subsequent billionaire joyrides to the edge of space, justified by words about them being the first steps to colonies on other planets.
With the world on lockdown, communicating via Zoom and playing together in online games it seemed much more likely to me that people would flee to virtual worlds to escape our broken reality: a thought which reminded me of the residents of Second Life who used to thank me for helping to build a virtual world that they could upload their consciousness to.
One of my favourite memories of Second Life is standing on the bottom of a polygon sea with digital fish swimming all around me. Once I had written those lines I was reminded of the opening words of Pyramid Song and so Polygon Sea became a tribute to Pyramid Song, incorporating some of the unusual rhythms and phrygian melodies that make the Radiohead song so interesting.
If you could upload yourself into the machine, would you run away with me?
All proceeds from this release will go to Code Club (https://codeclub.org/) to help young people around the world learn to code.
Tracklist
| 1. | Polygon Sea | 4:41 |
Lyrics
I stood at the bottom of a polygon sea
Digital fish swimming all around me
I soared on the wind through a polygon sky
Danced with angels and learned how to fly
Do you want to run away with me?
Run away with me?
Run away with me?
Do I want to watch them trawl the sea dry?
Or fill the sky full of smoke so I can't even cry?
We know how this is going to end,
Do we need to stay and watch
Do you want to run away with me?
Run away with me?
Run away with me?
If you could escape this mess,
would you click your heals and go?
The moon is too far away for us all,
but we can hide in this machine.
Do you want to run away with me?
Run away with me?
Run away with me?
You won't feel a thing
It will be like a dream
Just a data stream.
Credits
Words and Music: Jim Purbrick
License
All rights reserved.
Alien Alarms combine poetry, prose, philosophy and found sounds with live, improvised generative rhythms, beat chopping and custom software to make music about love, loss, technology and society for the head, the feet and the heart.