LIKE WEEDS “Ourselves Alone” C20 (Flag Day Recordings)


Warning! Warning! Like Weeds is blasting into your living rooms (via Shinjuku, Tokyo, but I’ll get to that in a second) like the Emergency Broadcast System on WEED (ahem), claxons blaring while voices chatter incoherently in slow motion, probably trying to wake you from your stupor to save you from some unknown disaster. That’s how it starts, “The Gourock Order,” side A, planet earth. That’s how it starts, but that’s not how it ends, because chattering electronics and clattering source material cuts through the murk following all the sirens and the ruckus. It’s like robots are hunting in the night. Hunting for what? For PEOPLE.

Maybe. But we should fear that eventuality, just like Like Weeds does, just like “Ourselves Alone” suggests once we’ve wiped out enough of us to actually be out there on our own with no fallback, no safety net. So we toil in fear. We toil to exhaustion. We toil till our fear turns to exhaustion. But if we can JUST dismantle this crane, we can get to the collapsed tunnel and get ourselves off this island before we’re cut off for good. At least that’s what “Skirbeck Voter” makes me think is the necessary course of action. I’m open to them if anyone’s got any better ideas.

Oh, “Ourselves Alone” was recorded in Shinjuku, Tokyo, in January 2019. I almost forgot to mention that.

Bona fide noise tape right here.



--Ryan