Don't buy the lie. millions now living will never die.
Death is a disease and can be cured.

the context:

the album

:

Millions now living will never die find Tortoise becoming the psychedelic animal you always could tell was lurking behind their self-titled release. Recorded in 1995 and released in 1996, the album was composed by Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire, and David Pajo.

Track  Song                      Length
01     Djed                      20:53
02     Glass Museum              05:23
03     A Survey                  02:51
04     the Taut and Tame         04:59
05     Dear Grandma and Grandpa  02:58
06     Along the Banks of Rivers 05:52

Here electronics began to inch even more deeply into the tortoise's shell. Bundy K. Brown had left the band after their Gamera single was released (he felt uncomfortable about Tortoise's rising popularity), leaving John McEntire to helm the controls without him.

Djed is heavily studio-enhanced, a piece composed of many movements into a undulating mix of vibes, sub bass, guitar, and putney (an antique modular synthesizer with plugs. At times it sounds like Can, where one can hear the drumming that gave Johnny "the Machine" Herndon his name. Throughout the twenty minutes of its duration, Djed takes you across the scattered remains of a torn earth. And that's how we like our coffee.

A Glass Museum displays David Pajo's wandering guitar mind, operating on a metaphoric level parellel with the song's title. A survey is looking for things, finding things, and putting them back down. The Taut and Tame is a song with passionate intensity, chasing you down the rabbit hole. Dear Grandma and Grandpa is a distorted letter from home, pops and gurgles, connecting to Along the Banks of Rivers (which was later reconceptualized by Douglas McCombs' band, Brokeback). Acting as an almost direct link to opening the third mind, this song's direct and pondering bass line pierces through the fabric of reality.

Sometimes I look inside and I am eternity. Millions now living will never die.

 

Works cited: The Wire, Issue 204 February 2001
Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger

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