Get all 21 Ben Below releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Land of Dreams, Song A Week: Volume XVI, Song A Week: Volume XV, Song A Week: Volume XIV, The Ballad Of Sir David Horsenborough, Helicopter Staves, Song A Week: Volume XIII, Song A Week: Volume XII, and 13 more.
1. |
First Steps, Again
02:14
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2. |
Wind You Back
03:10
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Her face is a blank canvas
As she's wheeled from room to room
Vacant stare through thickened glasses
Smell of sweat and cheap perfume
A band's set up in the corner
A group of volunteers from town
As the music starts to play, she can't resist to tap along
As colours start to wash away her frown
CHORUS
Wind you back, when grass was greener
Floating away on those melodies
Bitten by sweet nostalgia
Lost on a dive into memories
The rain falls ever stronger
As he paddles home from work
Tinny headphones, shuffled songs to stop his death from boredom
Find one that for years he hasn't heard
A pang of memories forgotten
Of laughs and of friends from golden years
Vows that bounds can be rewritten
To call them up, meet up and have a beer
CHORUS
And as life goes on you'll find those songs
That hit you like a freight train (hit you like a freight train)
The friends you've made and the friends you've lost
(You can remember but you can't go back)
When they knock you down and you can't go on
(hit you like a freight train, hit you like a freight train)
Take a moment, then raise your head and sing along
Be thankful for the times you had
CHORUS
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3. |
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I know that it can be difficult
With them crawling under your skin
You know that it is atypical
They say it comes from within
It's all coming back, it's coming
It's all coming back to me (x4)
Seventh son, what of you?
Born of the seventh father, what of you?
Knowing you're not the only one, what of you?
This curse can go no farther, what will you do?
I know that it can be difficult
With them crawling under your skin
You know that it is atypical
They say it comes from within
You know you've got to be clinical
The state you're in
Know your disease isn't finctional
They say it comes from within
Inside they slumber, what of you?
Your days are numbered, what will you do?
Under you skin, within you
Under your skin within you
While you're encumbered, what of you?
Can't help but wonder, what will you do?
I know that it can be difficult
With them crawling under your skin
You know that it is atypical
They say it comes from within
You know you've got to be clinical
The state you're in
Know your disease isn't finctional
They say it comes from within
Comes from within, comes from within
Comes from within, comes from within you (x4)
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4. |
Rockenspiel
02:03
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You take your mallet
And then you bring it down
Then when you smash it
You're the talk of the town
It's not a drumkit
And it's not a guitar
It's tuned percussion baby
And it'll get you far
CHORUS
We're gonna rock, rock rock, on the glock, glock, glock tonight
- SOLO -
- CHORUS -
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5. |
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Keep a low profile when I'm coming through
Stay in single file or they'll get you too
CHORUS
Keep it on the down low, low fi, fe fi fo fum
Run for the hills, for your life
This ain't no fun run, the fun's just begun, the run's just begun
So run! Like you've never run before
And don't you ever let the door hit you behind you as you leave
And as you squeeze through won't you please do one thing for me?
You've got to believe
And when you escape back to humankind
Won't you spare a thought for those you left behind
-CHORUS-
Remember, remember me. Remember me (x4)
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6. |
Space Is An Ocean
05:23
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Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its ultimate achievements, and the stars themselves are scattered no more widely than the seed of Adam, even then we shall still be like ants crawling on the face of the Earth. The ants have covered the world, but have they conquered it — for what do their countless colonies know of it, or of each other?
CHORUS:
Space is an ocean
Cosmonauts sail to horizons new
Space is an ocean
We've swathes of the black to cut through
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
CHORUS
Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth (with the single exception of the catastrophic destruction of space itself). Will this happen before our technical civilisation disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it for ever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth.
CHORUS
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7. |
Two Much
02:52
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8. |
Freedom
02:50
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I'm running out of fucks to give
I don't want to live to work because I work to live
When I look in the mirror, resentment's looking back at me
I'm the only one I can't forgive
Some day, I gotta give it up and leave
I wanna be free
Drive on, I don't need a place to stay
All gone, left behind my branded name
I'm not gonna live for them, I'm gonna live for me
From now on I'm never gonna be the same
Today; the day I give it up and leave
I'm gonna be free
Today I spread my wings
Today, this birdie sings
I'll fly above the clouds
I'll wear my feathers proud
And soar
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9. |
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I remember the days
Before despair and seclusion
I think about it a lot
The isolated malaise
Hate to break the illusion
That all that is is not
CHORUS
I pretend like we all do
Nothing really matters at all
I pretend like we all do
If you could show me a sign
That anything we make here matters
It might lighten the mood
But all your culture's benign
Your facade starts to shatter
If you change the way that it's viewed
CHORUS
Call me a grump and a loner
Call me a nihilist if it matters to you
Once you've assigned all your labels
Keeping track of me, what good'll it do?
(x2)
CHORUS
If it's as easy as just flipping a switch
And you can remove my enlightenment
To make me think like you
Take me out of the pits
Into a constructive environment
Do what you gotta do
I wanna see the world like you do
Even if I'm just a brain in a vat
A simulated worldview
Is there really such an issue with that
(x3)
CHORUS
CHORUS
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10. |
Un Fantôme
02:04
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Lecteur, as-tu quelquefois respiré
Avec ivresse et lente gourmandise
Ce grain d'encens qui remplit une église,
Ou d'un sachet le musc invétéré?
Charme profond, magique, dont nous grise
Dans le présent le passé restauré!
Ainsi l'amant sur un corps adoré
Du souvenir cueille la fleur exquise.
De ses cheveux élastiques et lourds,
Vivant sachet, encensoir de l'alcôve,
Une senteur montait, sauvage et fauve,
Et des habits, mousseline ou velours,
Tout imprégnés de sa jeunesse pure,
Se dégageait un parfum de fourrure.
La Maladie et la Mort font des cendres
De tout le feu qui pour nous flamboya.
De ces grands yeux si fervents et si tendres,
De cette bouche où mon coeur se noya,
De ces baisers puissants comme un dictame,
De ces transports plus vifs que des rayons,
Que reste-t-il? C'est affreux, ô mon âme!
Rien qu'un dessin fort pâle, aux trois crayons,
Qui, comme moi, meurt dans la solitude,
Et que le Temps, injurieux vieillard,
Chaque jour frotte avec son aile rude...
Noir assassin de la Vie et de l'Art,
Tu ne tueras jamais dans ma mémoire
Celle qui fut mon plaisir et ma gloire!
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11. |
Simple Song
02:38
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CHORUS
I want to write a simple song
One that sticks in people's craniums long after it has gone
And when they hear it on the radio and start to sing along
I get a warm feeling inside cause people like a sing I've done
And we sing la la la la la la la la la la la la
Sometimes, I struggle to find the time to write the song in my minds eye, or try to write the type of track I'd like to write this week or spend the time on sound design to get the beat to sound just right, or the synths to sound sublime
Truth is, I actually had something different recorded for this week, it was slightly different sounds over a similar beat. And I decided that I liked it and that maybe I'd like to try make something more of it in a week where I had more time
CHORUS
What's the point of this track? Well I was getting disheartened and wanted to write something, anything, pardon the manner of fact way I'd in fact say this exact phrase: Wait, I'd rather put it in song that tell you to your face
Sometimes, I feel like these songs don't count, like the short ones, or the joke ones, or the single instrument cop-outs. And time I agree is my enemy, I'd be the first to admit it, but sometimes I need to sit down with a pen and some paper and think about doing some work on my lyrics
And it's not just words, I feel there's loads of places where I'm not put through my paces and I know the way to face this, but my issue comes back to time, and in my mind I must resign myself that I can't be master of all trades but sometimes jack is just fine
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12. |
Back Through Time
03:57
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Yo, I'm here from the future / and I've travelled from the nineties
twenty five years at a constant velocity
I'll show you the past if you just come with me
Things are about to get timey-wimey
If you've been fishin or a wishin for a mission choose ours
all across our spacial and temporal journey we scour
To meet / Rhetorical / Historical / Figures of great power
So just wait till we hit 88 miles per hour
CHORUS
Here we go
Back through time
90s, 50s, Age of Piracy, Ancient Greece
(Roll it back)
No one knows
Who we'll find
Disney, Dostoevsky, Presley, Socrates
In a chair / or a hot tub / or a phone booth / or Delorian
Eras Roman / Jurassic / a classic / or Victorian
Seen more time loops in our prime than any prime-time Tralfadorian
Solve a paradox on my night watch, roll back the clocks and do it all again
Future Perfect or Days Of Future Past
Every day's groundhog day and we're having a blast
And when things go awry and I'm under attack
I'll be out in a flash but you know I'll be back
We don't give a damn about a consistent travel theory
We're a soft scifi time travelling duo / I'm him, and he's me
And unlike Hermione in Harry Potter 3
Fourth Dimension? / Fourth wall? / Pfft / They crumble before me!
CHORUS
And before you ask, go take a class, no you can't change the past, and what's happened has passed, so at last, when you make a break through, and take a mate through, try to reach the Steins Gate well you...
Well you've always been then, and it's no coincidence when, try again and again, the day happens the same way, every day, to your dismay, you may have brought about the thing you tried to change
CHORUS
CHORUS
CHORUS
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13. |
Lonely In Paradise
01:21
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Believe me when I tell you
Sometimes it's better not to rub that lamp
Cause what the genie doesn't tell you
It isn't only milk and honey in the other land
CHORUS
Wholly in paradise, ain't it nice
To have such a cozy life, ain't it nice
Got yourself a trophy wife, ain't it nice
But look closely, and slowly, you are the one and lonely, lonely in paradise
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