Max Tundra

Film your little sister with some dirt on her face
Read a Maya Deren book and shoot a staircase
Gather urgent footage for the introduction
Mess around with framing during post-production

Life with a tripod in Manchester beckoned
Panning the high street at twelve frames a second
Film a cloud on Super-8
Thread it through and check the gate

As data fills a perspex spool
My sequences will outsell Tool
So load me in and let me reign
'Cause I was born to entertain

Nothing happens when you die
You don't leave your body or fly off into the sky
The deities you count on were just made up by some guy

Nothing happens when I cry
Reminds me of the time I called you up to say goodbye
A pint of chicken soup comes falling from my eye

It's a winsome isolation I declare
Your engineering knocks me out of my chair
If mechanicals observed are what we are
Then number our days and point me to the car

Nothing happens by degrees
Your furtive semaphore is hidden by the trees
My predecessor always said you were a tease

Nothing happens every year
I scare a few more people off by saying 'dear'
What is it about my companionship you fear?

Every sentimental minute in your hands
Fills your Januaries with my plans
This is why we leave our ancestors alone
So number our days and lead me to the stone

As the village gives me up for dead
I hide in a neighbour's bed
Then under the door glides a river of glossy red
A fruit in a fractured skin
A slit in the peel and the juices come tumbling through
The boat was too crowded so I had a word with the crew

I can't get my head around spread betting
I'd rather use the Cher setting
The world's financial markets hold no interest for me
That man from the string quartet
Is wearing the thing that he won in a drunken bet
Your friend's trying to call you
It looks like he might be upset

Intricate patterns of light dictate the tone
Downed by a wink from a sylph I've never known
I'm so alone

The cutting-room men from the studio got their wish
The clunk of a cauldron on flagstone, the slippery dish
My seventy-eights in the move were all smashed apart
The legs in the megaphone pulse to the beat of my heart

Did you ever see The Holy Mountain On Ice?
Thirty tons of frogs and blood cascading like dice
The decoration painting
Was inhibited by fainting
And the clean-up operation wasn't nice

So you did some work for me and you didn't get paid?
Think of all the songs you sang and the love that you made
While Mr. Mendes kisses Kate
I, in my kitchen, break a plate
And sweep it up and dream of getting laid

I don't know if you got my letter
But everyone thinks you're great
If you come home it will be much better
And I will be your mate until we die

If you try to do the cube and it doesn't work out
Don't peel the stickers off or move the pieces about
Just send it in to this address
My underlings will do the rest
Unless you fill the envelope with doubt

As a child I used to be obsessed with Pale Saints
In a shop of art supplies among the sale paints
I thought this girl was Meriel
And I asked if she'd sing at my burial
"That isn't me," she said with some restraint

I don't know if you got my letter
It should have arrived by now
When you come home it will be much better
I'm longing to show you how until we die

I love my Nord Lead Three
I know she'll never cheat on me
Her walnut stick is good to feel
I like to turn her sandstone wheel
She always wears her bright red dress
What's underneath I can but guess
How about some hide-and-seek?
L'amour de nou c'est platonique

One summer in a panelled room
I plugged her into someone's loom
The majesty that did occur
Made pussycats and doggies purr
someone in the dinner queue
Had heard WMFU
He noticed all her subtle tricks
Despite their lowness in the mix

Her presets take me through the night
With spiky LFO delight
She supercedes the One and Two
I'd like to supercede her blue
Advanced subtractive synthesis
Is Heart FM's antithesis
Her family name is Clavia
Les sons qu'elle fait sont merveilleux

Spitting blood in a sink in a German hotel bathroom
A wet clot of red gum juice, souvenir of wisdom's ration
Rinsing face, drying hair, humming "Oh Engineer" by the brothers Larcombe
Thinking of the bands I never got a chance to spend my cash on
Che and his Caballero chucked it in when I said I liked them
Now I'll never catch them in a smoky room on Highbury Corner
I shall weep for them another day because I'm at the fulcrum
Of the Voodoo graveyard see-saw and I'm not the only mourner

What do we do when our friends split up?
Five little sevens then belly up
There's no more ash, no more soda pop
Why did those five have to make it stop?

At least we have Storm And Stress to show for the DC Implosion
Mushrooms grown on an upstairs Smalley wall
Are chopped down and moved away from
Five icemen melt without hint of a reforming notion
And the clan I saw perform the most give a bow and leave my kingdom
Talented friends and 25 eclipse the work of certain strummers
Steel-string chords and a railway or a globe, or Mr. Bickle's nonsense
Who can rescue us from the Embrace of these Monsoonless summers?
Don't rely on magic, friends because in rock there are no constants

What do we do when our friends split up?
Is there no way they can make it up?
If you bump into my penta friends
Be sure to ask if they meant to end

It was some change
Which came upon me
Or upon the room

Indescribably subtle
Yet momentous
Ineffable

It was some change
Which came upon me
Or upon the room

Indescribably subtle
Yet momentous
Ineffable

I isolate amino acids sometimes
I bottle them and sell them when the sun shines
Cold sores erupt if you don't keep lysine levels healthy
A tingle on your lip, should come and see me

Many foods are rich in arginine
Concentrate on the ones with more lysine
Highest levels of all in margarine

My attitude of sorrow for the dead man
Was hidden by my interest in his great plan
His dying 4/4 gasp withdrew his wait from the game
Now listening posts in Fnac will carry my name

An obiturary by Mr. Toop
Now he's gone there's one less laptop loop
With your help this time 'round I might recoup