instant karma: completely gone fishing

liner notes: mummydog/spaceecho

"Except for the real drums and vocals, which were added/replaced later, this song was recorded at home on the PC, using Cakewalk, Rebirth, SoundForge and the like. Pretty amazing what department store equipment can do these days. Whatever happened to Laika, by the way ... did she ever come down, the way Vince Hill did?"

A mummified dog is looking down upon me, and gravity sends him round. I wish it would do the same for me, the same for you. And I can do everything I want, yeah I can do everything. How much is that doggie in the orbit? (I'd like to throw a stick for you, I'd love to, wouldn't you too) the capsule might be alright, the radio and the lights. Forty years in the sky, a lonely dog on a million mile walk, on a million mile walk. How much is the doggie ... You're mine, mummydog.

--Martin

liner notes: freaks

'Philosophy statement. Ever seen the 1932 movie 'Freaks'? If not, you missed out. Real life dwarves, pinheads, limbless torsoes and siamsese twins go silver screen, and scared the shit out of everybody, so that their movie was banned before being released. Poor freaks, so much for their Hollywood career.'

I'm a dead end, I am. I must have taken a wrong turn, but I'm not on my own you're with me, hey, let's go and burn. All my motors are running, hot against the wall. I'm sick and happy, I'm still thriving, I feel ten feet tall. I'm a freak among freaks, so are you, mutilated beauty, lively freak among freaks, we're all free. Let's go out and have some fun, spoil their party tonight. I see naked fingers pointing, ow, put them in a fright. We're much more alike than you's really like, we're bent, they're straight, so you really hate the way they grow around us (they don't own it all), the way they sleep around us, crowd around us, all around us. Who'd rather see me silent, a freak without a grin, but what's a grin without a freak, tell me my perfect twin. I'm a freak ...

--Martin

liner notes: birthday suite

"The single of the album with a great, unusual animated video. A favourite for many, it's about an old man in a pensioners home, communicating with the bugs in his room. Slow forest, by the way, is the nice Thai word for cemetery. The highlight of the song , the elevating finale with Tom and Ollie on their best Pavarotti, was inexplicably culled for the radio single."

I'm not growing anymore, I decompose, I break my leg my shoulder, I lose my ears, I lose my nose, oops there it goes ... And she doesn't know that I'm not quite alone, I got friends on the ceiling, got neighbours in my bed, they're keeping me the company I never have, they're everywhere, and she won't care, that I see semaphores, they see moths, I receive morsecode, they see fireflies. They all tell me it's a slow forest, all the bugs and worms and maggots and butterflies, they're all friends of mine. I'm a giant, a whole world of their own. I'm all hills and valleys and forests and roads, they party on my pelvis and hide in my toes, and when the lights go down, they make music for me ... listen.

--Martin

liner notes: sorry, wrong planet

'I wrote and recorded the demo of this song after a good night out and rather too many toxic fluids. So there I was, 4 AM, totally drunk with this brilliant idea in my head, no microphone, just a metronome, an electric guitar, my 4-track tapemachine and headphones. Because I was living in a student home with paper-thin walls and hundreds of direct neighbours at the time I had to be all quiet as well. OK, I could use the headphones as a mic, just plug it in and record the metronome at 120 beats per minute. What do you do when you've got no guitar amp or fuzz and you still want a bit of distortion? You just use the transistor line gain on the 4-track and make due with the rather edgy outcome. Singing? All quiet? and just one set of headphones? I put the headphones on, left side on my mouth, right side on the back of my head, watched the VU-Meter of the metronome on the 4 track, counted my way through the song and whispered the lyrics. All done, I repulsed the phones to the appropriate input, noticed the recording level was near zilch, turned the volume to max and printed it to tape. You can imagine that this technique increased the overall noise level to unbelievable heights. And we even managed to recreate all this in a proper studio for the opener on `Small Mother'.'

Oh, I'm sorry this is the wrong planet that I put you down on. Though the clocks are ticking forward, time stands still for all but one. They all look like humans, yet nobody's sure the are. More than one. Beam us up, spare us the pain, all is hot, too hot to care for. Taken time, we feel the need to blank our minds and start to read. Books surpassed our deafened eyes and all that turns our heads are flies. Are flies ...

--Gordon