Siltbook Ledger from PRESSUREFIELD by Nautilux

# Siltbook Ledger

Beneath layers of silt and memory, this track emerged during a three-day mourning ritual we held in the flooded archives chamber. I couldn't speak properly for days after recording the final monologue—the names felt too heavy in my mouth. We brought personal artifacts from each fallen comrade into the tracking session: Nira's circuit maps, Vex's silver collection, Eliot's broken pressuregram.

The cello part wasn't written down. Mereen, our string player, simply sat with her back against the hull where we'd scratched the names and played what she felt. Those harmonics you hear floating above the ensemble—that's the sound of someone translating grief into something you can almost touch. When the brass enters, it's not playing notes so much as breathing together in remembrance.

Field samplers captured the actual creaking of our vessel at crush depth during the recording. That subtle rumble underlying the third verse? We were hiding from an Accord patrol ship, everyone holding their breath while the tracking continued.

Our ledgering ritual juxtaposes mineral permanence against human fragility. The spoken section wasn't planned—I found myself unable to sing anymore after recounting Eliot's story. What you hear is the raw take, complete with the sound of pages turning as I read actual entries from our Siltbook.

This isn't just a memorial song. It's how we navigate forward with the weight of absence. Every performance becomes another entry in our collective record—the living carrying forward what the lost began. Some nights we can't finish playing it. Other times, it's the only thing that lets us continue.

Tracklist

4.	Siltbook Ledger	3:31

Lyrics

Ledger pressed in silted vellum, names slow and bare,
Mineral hush where fervor’s spent folds the air.
We tally what splinters can teach:
Brass sighs—each loss out of reach.

Nira mapped caustic seams through cauldron haze,
Salt rivals cracking in midnight arrays.
Steady hands, breathing through corrosion’s wile—
Marking circuits in silence, unspoken trial.
Brine crooks her glyph in the archive’s pale glaze,
Listed, unmarked, but never erased.

Vex hoarded luster from haul to hull,
Mocked the Accord with a pulse never dull.
Nicked silver bones where the currents strain,
Records smudged, initials bloom in vein.
Rallied beneath the ballast, quick with a jest,
His laughter persists in this ledgered unrest.

Eliot carried a vow like cracked glass light,
Pressuregram folded, torch out of sight.
Words spilled in gravel—the promise was thin,
I keep his coil etched under skin.
Signal fizzled on departure’s ring,
Still we shoulder his hollow offering.

Gathered entries deepen the tone of the hull. When we write memory in this siltbook, it weighs us even as it steadies—each name, a field I wade to recall. The Accord cannot erase what is gritted into us, crosshatched with refusal. We endure, ledgering the price and inheriting persistence. Every fracture added makes us less alone.

Credits

from PRESSUREFIELD, released July 16, 2025

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