Brainstorm: Desert World (2005) (lyrics and cover notes)
By the end of the twenty-sixth century, Earth lay in ruins. A millennium of mechanised exploitation and war had left it a sweltering, barren desert - greenhouse-hot, racked by hard UV, and poisoned by chemical and radioactive waste. Upon its surface rose the twisted skeletons of the Cities, where the bones of twenty billion humans whitened in the sun.
On Mars the colonists watched as the supply ships came less and less often, till finally they came no more.
Ever deeper they burrowed beneath the sands, maintaining the precious machines which won from the rusty rocks the water and oxygen they needed to survive. Food, barely enough for subsistence, grew in caverns lit by artificial suns.
In that narrowing world of the Caves, much amenity was lost - but no knowlege - for the colony's only hope lay in technology. There could be no fallback preindustrial paradigm - only death - if the machines should fail. The computers and robots, solar cells and catalysers - the knowlege of how to repair them - were as basic to their survival as air and water.
Early in the fourth millenium, the population began to increase. No crisis had threatened the colony for two centuries, and all that they consumed could now be made good. At last the automated factories, naked upon the surface, began to build again the things whose designs had lain dormant in the memory banks for eight hundred years. They began to build spaceships.
---------------------------------------------
Brainstorm: Desert World
1. The Light (Eunomia Sunrise) 11'52"
2. Occupation 7’04"
3. Unfathomed Darkness 5’06”
4. Mutants 10'45"
5. Shadow of the Past 7'12"
6. Paradise Lost 8'50"
7. Martian Chronicle 7’22”
8. Goblins 4'02"
9. Desert World 11’28”
1. The Light (Eunomia Sunrise). (Brainstorm 1999)
I saw the light at night, it was the only way
It was a way home, it was a way home
One boat ever landed there to be stranded there
To be broken on the rocks alone
I want to go home
Do you see the light, I wanted to know
Ten thousand rocks go round and not make a sound
The robots to find, so far out of mind
Only a broken lead, it was so easy freed
But not what it seemed
An island of dream
Was there a nameless stone to make a home
To make of the light the freedom to fight
On Earth we stood so tall, answered the call
Now savages we pay the price
The roll of the dice
2. Occupation. (Brainstorm 1999)
Don’t want to be here when the tithe-man comes
To count the proud white horses
Don’t need to feel again the hatred running steely
In my veins
When only memories are clean in moral penury
Today is dark with bitter lust for freedom
And all I see are muddy graves
And all we are are broken slaves
Our children are the cattle of invaders
Time calls us traitors
Time goes away
Time goes to ...
I needed answers when the questions fell like rain
I needed absolution from the price not thought to be regained
In forest glades where rivers flow like mercury
And so below, until the end, forever
Beginning me
So take the breath now from the trees
And from the death of my enemies
I’m fated to fulfill their silence with the darkest prophecies
I march in all a ragged train and grasped with in a hand
So fain would I be thought
For what is not the fate of all
Beginning me
3. Unfathomed Darkness (instrumental) (Brainstorm 2000)
4. Mutants (Brainstorm 1989)
A clever man had a clever plan, said I know what you're looking for
In his hole living like a mole, let's have a third world war
People out there having too much fun, with all their philosophy
I know how to get 'em on the run, the last laugh is with me
Now you should see his smiling face, oh yeah he had a ball
No more world wide arms race, not much world at all
Now there's deserts, oases green, with nothing much there in between
And nothing grows the same way twice, and nothing much is seen
Just miles of glassy sand that glows, and giant mice and fleas
No more protests, no more fun, no more philosophy
And in their bunkers underground, playing games and counting bombs
The clever men may still be found, the decades don't seem long
We're mutants we got arms and legs, we got tails yeah we got heads
The sky is black and the sun is red, shining down on the grateful dead
Now soon they'll leave their dusty caves and stop us eating roots
And sell us fridges and microwaves and dress us up in suits
But we aint sorry yet, we like philosophy
We're eight foot tall don't talk at all
We got telephathy
We're mutants, we aint interested, we're having too much fun
We don't need laws and greedy paws to lie here in the sun
We wag our tails and eat blue snails and cogitate profound
We talk to Mars and move the stars and levitate around
5. Shadow of the Past. (Brainstorm 1997)
When you look back on your life don’t you see the shadow
When you look back on your time on the balcony of crime
Don’t you see it as the precipice of mind
In all the fates that passed you by
In the good and the bad and the high and the dry
Don’t you see the shadow
Where was what you wanted to be
Known to dream and open to the purposes of love
Did you think of those you left behind
Or those who went before you
Revising memories can’t hide the things you could have altered
Or cure the dreams that died
Forgetting all the roads you didn’t venture on
And all the love witheld against contingencies of fear
What were you thinking of
Yes, you’re out of luck and you’re moving on
The shadow of the past darkens the sky
Dimension of morality and I can’t even see the meaning
It beats clearly in my eyes
Can you believe the feeling is right upon the sky
And you can’t even try
6. Paradise Lost. (Brainstorm 1998)
There are no jewelled forests any more
No diamond-hued caverns to implore
No rivers flow in gentle mystery
No longer reeds caress the banks unseen
If tomorrow came and took away
Recollection of sweet light of day
Would you no more contend against the loss
Forgetting even that you pay the cost
Tired world a fragile open hand
Children drawing rainbows in the sand
Of shores that waves do but caress
Choices on which so much can rest
7. Martian Chronicle (Brainstorm 2000)
Down upon the rolling sands a fiery column came
From morning star a seed of life reached out its hand
We came, no reason can deny the future that began
What echoes of the tales of old rang through the land
There’s a light beyond the dying walls of that old Earth
Universe awaits the will to march into rebirth
We’ll never leave these red sands of Mars
All of our lives are just an afterthought
What broken memories deny
Beyond all other dreams we’ve touched the sky
Ascraeus rising to the stars
A hundred million miles we’ve come so far
All about the sky was red, the domes we made they bled
Tired faces scarce believed the rolling thunder weaved
No science analysed the sight of Deimos cross the sky
First steps in sand that swirled in the breezes of another world
8. Goblins (instrumental). (Brainstorm 1999)
9. Desert World (Brainstorm 2002)
A fortune in oxygen, the portent of what you said
The drone of the sand upon the ground
Immortal the labyrinth as foretold on megalith
Then taken the godless have paid
Betrayed by an avarice, embayed now in nothingness
Entrained in the seasons of the soul
Conscience uneasy sits, no sleep quite as long as this
The sky now an enemy above
A thread within the tapestry is frayed
Before our feet we save no source
Of the hope we used to need
As you begin to see
No light, but only darkness ahead for me
I dreamed it was a war
Stars in the sky above, the dream in the eyes of love
Metallic the taste of my blood
Aerosol haze in the dusk of the days
Over canyons enscored by the flood
A billion years gone, now a fate now a song
Now derided reflection of time
A fight for the grail, would the magma plume fail
To retain what I needed to find
Who shrinks to the dust returning
Who shrinks from the sable shore
Where the high and lofty yearing
Of the soul shall be no more
So stand by your glasses steady
This world is a world of lies
Let's drink to the dead already
A toast the the next to die *
In the silence of tomorrow
I'll be there
* RFC Mess song, France 1917.
___________________________________________________
Brainstorm
Steve Bechervaise: keyboard & synthesiser.
Craig Carter: guitar, vocals, keyboard.
Vittorio Di Iorio: drums & percussion, keyboard, guitar.
Paul Foley: vocals, guitar, flute, samples.
Jeff Powerlett: bass guitar, vocals.
Recorded between 2000 and 2005 at Atlantis, Lighting Lab, La Casa Di Iorio and BSCCD Studios, Australia.
Engineered by Dave from Atlantis, Phil Schreck & Brainstorm.
Produced by Brainstorm.
Cover design and photography: Jeff Powerlett.
All songs written by Bechervaise, Carter, Di Iorio, Foley & Powerlett, except Mutants, written by Bechervaise, Carter, Eastaway, Foley, Lukeis, Simonite, arranged by Bechervaise, Carter, Di Iorio, Foley, Powerlett.
Brainstorm would like to thank Phil Schreck and Mrs Di Iorio for their generous assistance: material, artistic, spiritual and culinary.
All music and lyrics copyright Brainstorm 2004.
Copyright Brainstorm 2005.
By the end of the twenty-sixth century, Earth lay in ruins. A millennium of mechanised exploitation and war had left it a sweltering, barren desert - greenhouse-hot, racked by hard UV, and poisoned by chemical and radioactive waste. Upon its surface rose the twisted skeletons of the Cities, where the bones of twenty billion humans whitened in the sun.
On Mars the colonists watched as the supply ships came less and less often, till finally they came no more.
Ever deeper they burrowed beneath the sands, maintaining the precious machines which won from the rusty rocks the water and oxygen they needed to survive. Food, barely enough for subsistence, grew in caverns lit by artificial suns.
In that narrowing world of the Caves, much amenity was lost - but no knowlege - for the colony's only hope lay in technology. There could be no fallback preindustrial paradigm - only death - if the machines should fail. The computers and robots, solar cells and catalysers - the knowlege of how to repair them - were as basic to their survival as air and water.
Early in the fourth millenium, the population began to increase. No crisis had threatened the colony for two centuries, and all that they consumed could now be made good. At last the automated factories, naked upon the surface, began to build again the things whose designs had lain dormant in the memory banks for eight hundred years. They began to build spaceships.
---------------------------------------------
Brainstorm: Desert World
1. The Light (Eunomia Sunrise) 11'52"
2. Occupation 7’04"
3. Unfathomed Darkness 5’06”
4. Mutants 10'45"
5. Shadow of the Past 7'12"
6. Paradise Lost 8'50"
7. Martian Chronicle 7’22”
8. Goblins 4'02"
9. Desert World 11’28”
1. The Light (Eunomia Sunrise). (Brainstorm 1999)
I saw the light at night, it was the only way
It was a way home, it was a way home
One boat ever landed there to be stranded there
To be broken on the rocks alone
I want to go home
Do you see the light, I wanted to know
Ten thousand rocks go round and not make a sound
The robots to find, so far out of mind
Only a broken lead, it was so easy freed
But not what it seemed
An island of dream
Was there a nameless stone to make a home
To make of the light the freedom to fight
On Earth we stood so tall, answered the call
Now savages we pay the price
The roll of the dice
2. Occupation. (Brainstorm 1999)
Don’t want to be here when the tithe-man comes
To count the proud white horses
Don’t need to feel again the hatred running steely
In my veins
When only memories are clean in moral penury
Today is dark with bitter lust for freedom
And all I see are muddy graves
And all we are are broken slaves
Our children are the cattle of invaders
Time calls us traitors
Time goes away
Time goes to ...
I needed answers when the questions fell like rain
I needed absolution from the price not thought to be regained
In forest glades where rivers flow like mercury
And so below, until the end, forever
Beginning me
So take the breath now from the trees
And from the death of my enemies
I’m fated to fulfill their silence with the darkest prophecies
I march in all a ragged train and grasped with in a hand
So fain would I be thought
For what is not the fate of all
Beginning me
3. Unfathomed Darkness (instrumental) (Brainstorm 2000)
4. Mutants (Brainstorm 1989)
A clever man had a clever plan, said I know what you're looking for
In his hole living like a mole, let's have a third world war
People out there having too much fun, with all their philosophy
I know how to get 'em on the run, the last laugh is with me
Now you should see his smiling face, oh yeah he had a ball
No more world wide arms race, not much world at all
Now there's deserts, oases green, with nothing much there in between
And nothing grows the same way twice, and nothing much is seen
Just miles of glassy sand that glows, and giant mice and fleas
No more protests, no more fun, no more philosophy
And in their bunkers underground, playing games and counting bombs
The clever men may still be found, the decades don't seem long
We're mutants we got arms and legs, we got tails yeah we got heads
The sky is black and the sun is red, shining down on the grateful dead
Now soon they'll leave their dusty caves and stop us eating roots
And sell us fridges and microwaves and dress us up in suits
But we aint sorry yet, we like philosophy
We're eight foot tall don't talk at all
We got telephathy
We're mutants, we aint interested, we're having too much fun
We don't need laws and greedy paws to lie here in the sun
We wag our tails and eat blue snails and cogitate profound
We talk to Mars and move the stars and levitate around
5. Shadow of the Past. (Brainstorm 1997)
When you look back on your life don’t you see the shadow
When you look back on your time on the balcony of crime
Don’t you see it as the precipice of mind
In all the fates that passed you by
In the good and the bad and the high and the dry
Don’t you see the shadow
Where was what you wanted to be
Known to dream and open to the purposes of love
Did you think of those you left behind
Or those who went before you
Revising memories can’t hide the things you could have altered
Or cure the dreams that died
Forgetting all the roads you didn’t venture on
And all the love witheld against contingencies of fear
What were you thinking of
Yes, you’re out of luck and you’re moving on
The shadow of the past darkens the sky
Dimension of morality and I can’t even see the meaning
It beats clearly in my eyes
Can you believe the feeling is right upon the sky
And you can’t even try
6. Paradise Lost. (Brainstorm 1998)
There are no jewelled forests any more
No diamond-hued caverns to implore
No rivers flow in gentle mystery
No longer reeds caress the banks unseen
If tomorrow came and took away
Recollection of sweet light of day
Would you no more contend against the loss
Forgetting even that you pay the cost
Tired world a fragile open hand
Children drawing rainbows in the sand
Of shores that waves do but caress
Choices on which so much can rest
7. Martian Chronicle (Brainstorm 2000)
Down upon the rolling sands a fiery column came
From morning star a seed of life reached out its hand
We came, no reason can deny the future that began
What echoes of the tales of old rang through the land
There’s a light beyond the dying walls of that old Earth
Universe awaits the will to march into rebirth
We’ll never leave these red sands of Mars
All of our lives are just an afterthought
What broken memories deny
Beyond all other dreams we’ve touched the sky
Ascraeus rising to the stars
A hundred million miles we’ve come so far
All about the sky was red, the domes we made they bled
Tired faces scarce believed the rolling thunder weaved
No science analysed the sight of Deimos cross the sky
First steps in sand that swirled in the breezes of another world
8. Goblins (instrumental). (Brainstorm 1999)
9. Desert World (Brainstorm 2002)
A fortune in oxygen, the portent of what you said
The drone of the sand upon the ground
Immortal the labyrinth as foretold on megalith
Then taken the godless have paid
Betrayed by an avarice, embayed now in nothingness
Entrained in the seasons of the soul
Conscience uneasy sits, no sleep quite as long as this
The sky now an enemy above
A thread within the tapestry is frayed
Before our feet we save no source
Of the hope we used to need
As you begin to see
No light, but only darkness ahead for me
I dreamed it was a war
Stars in the sky above, the dream in the eyes of love
Metallic the taste of my blood
Aerosol haze in the dusk of the days
Over canyons enscored by the flood
A billion years gone, now a fate now a song
Now derided reflection of time
A fight for the grail, would the magma plume fail
To retain what I needed to find
Who shrinks to the dust returning
Who shrinks from the sable shore
Where the high and lofty yearing
Of the soul shall be no more
So stand by your glasses steady
This world is a world of lies
Let's drink to the dead already
A toast the the next to die *
In the silence of tomorrow
I'll be there
* RFC Mess song, France 1917.
___________________________________________________
Brainstorm
Steve Bechervaise: keyboard & synthesiser.
Craig Carter: guitar, vocals, keyboard.
Vittorio Di Iorio: drums & percussion, keyboard, guitar.
Paul Foley: vocals, guitar, flute, samples.
Jeff Powerlett: bass guitar, vocals.
Recorded between 2000 and 2005 at Atlantis, Lighting Lab, La Casa Di Iorio and BSCCD Studios, Australia.
Engineered by Dave from Atlantis, Phil Schreck & Brainstorm.
Produced by Brainstorm.
Cover design and photography: Jeff Powerlett.
All songs written by Bechervaise, Carter, Di Iorio, Foley & Powerlett, except Mutants, written by Bechervaise, Carter, Eastaway, Foley, Lukeis, Simonite, arranged by Bechervaise, Carter, Di Iorio, Foley, Powerlett.
Brainstorm would like to thank Phil Schreck and Mrs Di Iorio for their generous assistance: material, artistic, spiritual and culinary.
All music and lyrics copyright Brainstorm 2004.
Copyright Brainstorm 2005.