Scott Walker – The Drift (2006)


The sound of nightmares, lurching palpitations from the void scattered across a 70 minute album that will break you. Instrumentation designed to eminate a feel of complete unease and dismay, anxiety and fear homeward bound emotions. Cacophanous structures between the drawn out silences, violins wailing at the top of their lungs, quiet the only companion to loud, a complete inversion of time and the storytelling siren of Scott Walker’s voice your guide through the autumnal abyss of your broken dreams. If you can imagine yourself lying helplessly paralysed, awake and aware of the spatio-temporal correlation of your body but unable to circumvent the arrival of the hooded shade that echoes in the halls outside.
Unusual for Lurker to feature a borderline singer-songwriter/avantgarde agressor, but times they are a changing – and this wouldn’t be up here if I didn’t think you guys would absolutely love it. The Drift has a lot in common with The Black Flux by Virus, and unaware as I am, Czral and co seem to have taken one or two ideas from the Scott Walker’s cooking pot here. The album oozes the same feel, albeit Walker’s release verging all the more towards avantgarde territory. Credited recently as an influence on the vocal arrangement on Kayo Dot’s newest release, Coyote – and posted here for the level of intensity and dreamlike ethereality of his accomplishment; if you like your music dangerously bizarre and twisted then this is a necessity.

As the grossness of spring lolls its head against the window
As the grossness of spring lolls its bloodshot head
Curare! Curare! Curare!
Brogue cries from the street
Curare! Curare!
As the grossness of spring rose
A tumor balloon to squeak against the window
With the grossness of spring staining into the walls
The chair had been shifted ever so slightly
Say five feet or two centimeters
The prints of my fingers dusted from doorknobs
A lamp had been dimmed
Some sawdust where a ring had been
Where nice girls were turned into whores
Gardens with fountains where peacocks had strutted
Where deaf children were born
The splendor of tigers turning to gold in the desert
Pale meadows of stranded pyramids
Sonny boy
such a sonny boy
There’s a song in the air
Curare! Curare! Curare!
But the fair senorita don’t seem to care
Curare! Curare! Curare!
As the grossness of spring lolls its head against the window
As the grossness of spring lolls its bloodshot head
I merely got up so slowly
Shuffled across the floor
Closed the door on the landing
Descending the stairs
Dipping into the street
The paralysed street
Brogue says “Good afternoon!”
I say “Good afternoon!”
“It’s a lovely afternoon”
“Yes, it’s a lovely afternoon”I
Into pockets unstitching so weighted with pins
Into eyes imploding on mazes of sins
The puddle beneath the cork
Bobbing on a mild chop that rolled in
Off the river Dix and the open water beyond

Purchase / Scott Walker

You'll find me in the vast wilderness of British Columbia, talking metal at LURKER, or working in publishing and front-end web/eBook development.

1 Comment

  • Reply April 24, 2010

    excellentsword

    Man, this is great. It does make me want to listen to Virus though. I will hold off for the album to finish!

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