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