The night watch

by Winter Trees Stand Naked

The night watch cover art
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about

Trip hop, ambient, audio collage, nicotine, some hip hop, lots of samples, a few words, ten tracks, nineteen minutes.

credits

released 24 February 2010

tags

tags: experimental hip hop ambient collage dark ambient spoken word trip hop Berlin

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Track Name: The game
There are some things about you that I can't explain too clearly
Like when you're not alone but still you call and say you miss me
Your bed is warm but somehow you don't feel you have enough
You lie and cheat to get me near you, closer to your touch.

You supplicate and plead saying you'd do anything for me
But you forget I like to see you begging, on your knees
I wanna see you shiver, twist and tremble with desire
The only way I know from here, my dear, is to go higher.
Track Name: The tenant
I used to know this guy who lived in the apartment directly above mine back in 1986... Every once in a while we would come across each other in the elevator and he would barely lift his gaze from his shoes to mumble a shy "goodbye" when I got off. He was the quiet but creepy type, the kind that you wouldn't be surprised to see some day on the front page news because he had flipped out, killed his mother and eaten her breasts with garlic sauce and a nice Chianti. Or maybe he was just as harmless as he looked, but boy, did he freak me out.

As you would expect, he was normally as silent as a mouse, but from time to time he had this annoying habit of playing bass really late at night. It's not that it was loud, it's just that he was... bad. I mean, really bad. I would be lying in bed, just about to go to sleep, and I would start hearing this gentle but persistent thumping coming from the ceiling and echoing through the walls. He would start playing a line and fumble, stop, start again, lose the beat, slap the strings, miss a note and play the same melody in a loop for hours on end.

Sometimes he played along a drum track that had no doubt been recorded by himself too, and that only made it so much worse, as now there were two or three different beats for him to get lost to.

I never got around to telling him off on it because, fortunately, this didn't happen more than once a week, and after a couple of days of not hearing him I would forget about the matter completely. That is, until it the next time it happened, of course. This went on for what probably was a couple of months.

Then one night, something funny happened. I was lying in the darkness when the pulsating waves of the bass started pouring into my eardrums once more. But something was different this time. The rhythm was steadier, a bit more confident. There were still notes off-key and off-beat, but on the whole it didn't sound so atrocious. The guy was definitively improving. Instead of having to fight against it to fall asleep, that night the music actually managed to soothe me.

Week after week, the melodies became more fluid, the pace less clumsy, until one night, the flow of the music became so perfect that what had once kept me awake due to its sheer disharmony and awkwardness had now reached such skill and precision that this time it kept me up in awed fascination until well into the early hours of the morning.

The next weekend, however, nothing happened. Nothing at all. Just a dreadful, unnerving silence, only punctuated by the odd car passing by the street outside. I lay there awake, staring at the ceiling, waiting for him to start playing again. But he didn't. And there was only stillness that night.

That Monday I noticed that his name had been removed from the doorbell, so, fearing the worst, I asked my landlady if she knew what had become of him. Haven't you heard, my dear? she said. His heart stopped, just like that, she said. He was so young, she said. Who would have imagined?

But somehow, I wasn't so suprised; it was as if I had understood what was happening, that the coincidence was too precise to be just a coincidence. What I don't know is whether he just felt he had achieved the only thing he was here for, or if it was simply reaching perfection that killed him. After all, it is a known well fact that just before a heart attack is the only moment when the heart beats with absolute regularity...

Sometimes I find myself whistling that last riff to myself in the darkness, and I fall asleep with my ear close to the wall, just in case he decides that he isn't done just yet and decides to come back. I wouldn't want to miss it for anything in the world.
Track Name: The night watch
4 A.M., staring at the ceiling
shouldn't be awake but honestly, I'm scared of dreaming
so I'm just here sitting in my bed and thinking
wondering if anything I've been through has some meaning

You're lying by my side naked and I'm watching you
you're deep asleep and the moonlight's shining through
your breath is calm, your breasts are bare
you shift and smile when I lean down to touch your hair

strange days, long nights
you trust in me and tell me everything will be alright
I know you say it 'cause you think that it's true
but I can't dream anymore the way I used to

And another sleepless night goes by.

Damn.
Track Name: Undertow
Take my hand and come with me, we're going down to the waterline
where the river calls your name and softly tells you pretty lies
Sink with me to the bottom, drowning slowly in my arms
Say goodbye to the world you came from and all you let behind

Let the current rock your body, like a leaf blown in the wind
let your hands rest in the water like two broken little twigs
Close your eyes forever and forget about your dreams
what you dearly hold on to is not as precious as it seems

Wash it all away
Let go
Wash it all away
Let go