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Gentle Songs Of Ceaseless Horror

by Louis Barabbas

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    Glass mastered fourteen track CD packaged in full colour gatefold davinci case featuring photography by Grebo Gray and Christine Keating. Also contains full colour lyric booklet.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Gentle Songs Of Ceaseless Horror via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
If you see my darling With her best dress on Tell her I'm gone Love ain't here no more Though it left its spores I'm moving on I've done my best But I'm tired of these tests Every damsel I've met Preferred being in distress Good luck and so long Let bygones be bygone Just play some old song That surprised me when I was young Okay Have it your way But I don't have to stay And take this From the likes of you Now where was I? Oh yeah, goodbye I've got too much to do My life's all in front of me Lit up like a christmas tree The rest is all history That's how it appears to me. I've still got all this time Look at me, I feel fine Have another glass of wine Before I go My moments have frozen My vision grows narrow My past now lies fallow In another man's care So take all I am And then suck out the marrow Set alight to my shadow If you dare No, no I won't go. No, no I won't. What will you do With all you know of me When I'm just a memory? Hold that memory close Don't let it get away Tell it to stay Grasp hold of the smoke And lock it up If it moves Make it stop Preserve all that I've got Just don't give me up. Yeah I get the gist I'll be mourned but not missed That's just how it is. Well enough is enough.
2.
You did this to me In a siege both soft and slow The venom now runs deep And the rivers overflow You did this to me At the ruin of the day I still recall the scene You wore green and I wore grey You did this to me Lifted the veil off your intent Revealed the hole hidden beneath Down and down it went You did this to me As the leaves began to fall Exposed your heart and all its teeth While shadows dripped from every wall We returned to a world of corners On a sea without a tide Always trying to go forwards But only ever moving side to side And down in the froth and foam Where we began to sink I dreamed you'd been sculpted out of precious stone While I was merely pen and ink You did this to me As the mad studied the sane In all their grim varieties Their endless shapes and shades You did this to me Yeah you did this to me You did this to me Yeah you
3.
We've been worn down by glamour. Now the sins all seem the same. I feel like a dog forever licking The butcher's window pane. Time is tightening its grip. The coin has had its final flip. So before our last drops are dripped And we've slipped into the crypt... Let's get married. For love or for fear, It doesn't matter it's all the same thing round here, Let's get married. For better or for worse, Before the horrors of the hole and the hearse. Death is at the bar Rattling his cup, Saying "Ladies and Gentlemen It's time to drink up." So before intimacy Turns to ennui, While eternity looks down on us Hungrily... Let's get married. For sickness and health, By force, by persuasion or stealth,. Let's get married At the first chance we get we'll be wed: Our blood oath... bled. Let's get married. Before the flowers lose their bloom, Before we're all consumed by the tomb Let's get married. Before we waste away And decay, Marry me. What do you say?
4.
No lies I've seen through them all And looked out the other side Over all those sorry goodbyes We throw away Like so many broken toys Heaped up in a pile With their painted on smiles As we doubt The beliefs we can't live without Well they come and they go Turning from icons to logos And I I talked to myself all my life But my Self never once replied I said Boy The only thing that'll last is your shame It'll cling and stick fast to your name And remain The one beast you can't tame But have faith Just not in myths Sometimes As I read between the rhymes I dream of how to Empty my heart of you So I'm tense Future, past and present At the edge of his thoughts A man sees all sorts So I keep a picture of her with me Although it's more of a diagram But who gives a damn? Because boy The only thing that'll last is your shame It ain't joy we measure love in It's pain And gain And more of the same But have faith Just not in myths {instrumental} Because boy The only thing that'll last is your shame Your heart beats in time to the blame That stain won't wash away But have faith Just not in myths When my soul is weighed upon the scales And I can pore over the souvenirs Of all the years I know some maps can show you too much And some merely show you the way Turn the keys in all the locks Take the puppets from the box Stop the cogs in all the clocks Because a moment of defiance Turned our magic into science And I long to return So come let's mend our tempers Throw earth upon the embers And cease to be, yet still become. What goes on will go on And on and on But boy we don't go on For long.
5.
6.
Final Voyage 03:05
I am now all that I am ever likely to be I am the tick awaiting its tock I've been drifting for days Watching the waves Without considering the depths or the rocks I stand before you unburdened of my prime I have slalomed the slung darts of fate So now scrub me down With the women that stuck around It ain't never but it's late Without one single exception I've loathed every man I've longed to be Now I'm tying the loose ends To the throats of my friends On the shore as we push out to sea Row, row Mind how she goes Don't suppose we'll e'er return At the end of this day Cast me away Stoke up the fire Watch me burn I'm tired of asserting my sanity On this mad and miserable world I have glutted my lust For quite long enough And these girls all just make me feel old So morph me into a fiction Rearrange my life so it fits I'll leave you to decide (Because believe me I've tried) What the moral of this sordid tale is Row, row… Stupefy me with religion Seduce what remains of my soul For good or for ill Give me one last cheap thrill A heaven instead of a hole Now squeeze all the trees into paper So my testament can be writ large Beneath this swollen sky We'll watch the ink dry With our nibs dipped anew in old scars Row, row…
7.
Widow 03:03
Come let me in I'm soaked to the skin And the wind begins to blow The sand in the hourglass has turned to snow But if you let me lie Awhile by your side I will stay with you until the dawn Where did they go All those tomorrows That turned and fled so fast I've no plans for the future Just for the past I don't fear the fall I don't fear it at all But I call call call to you Don't face this fall alone. For blood still flows Where once it flowed Still flows though now so slow I can't give you joy But I'll take your woes Widow If you let them go I should've stayed If only to fade Along with the photographs Age is a disguise we can't take off How can you deny The lure of these lies And why why why Won't you lie to me no more? Blood still flows Where once it flowed Still flows though now so slow I can't give you joy But I'll take your woes Widow If you let them go.
8.
We are the stuff of archive not of history The sea at high tide not the stones it leaves Something said alone But not done I held my breath as I reached the shore We owe this world one death and nothing more Thought I was home But I was wrong When I heard which way you'd gone I ran all the way Give me old friends Over young love any day We are the stuff of archive not of history Not the trees that grow high but the fallen leaves You're on my mind All the time When I heard which way you'd gone I ran all the way Give me old friends Over young love any day We are the stuff of archive not of history The more we survive the less our lives mean What would I do Without you?
9.
I was always almost a good man But I've never been almost great. And you watched me rue all the rest. Though I trust you with my disrepair More than love and more than hate It's for the things that are torn In the thick of the dawn That I wait. Some lives are just loose ends to sew And our threads are still entwined They are bound fast around all I have left. You gave me a song in a watch It would play and I would wind But the last time it did I unclasped the lid Too late For inside the case I saw more than one face As the hands both raised to noon And when counting the cogs in the musical box I forever lost its tune One day I awoke from our love As though from a pleasant dream Each kiss was an abyss without end. At its core were two fictions made flesh With this song their epilogue That the tiny tuned teeth Rotating beneath Will attest You said you'd stay with me always. Was that a promise or a threat? Now you're not around I don't know. You left me these words but no voice Just tones tapped on tin And as the cylinders slow The keys it should toe only rust I dream every night That the wraith personae Dance to Clair De Lune But when counting the cogs in the musical box I forever lost its tune Each tick of this clock is a beat Of my heart as it once was. Oh you are still beautiful now. I wasn't cold until you showed me that warmth In the time between the tunes Our lives were to be Played in the wrong key And too low. I'm losing my way More and more every day And I know I'm losing you too So I'm drawn to follow All the silent echos Of old bones Because counting the cogs in a musical box Will never explain its tune Before it began And long after its end I have known Our waltz was always to be Over too soon
10.
Scarecrow 05:06
On my wedding day They only rang one single bell No witness came You had me all to yourself A willow veil and gown of long leaf pine instead of lace An embroidered train endowed with twines of every muted shade. On my wedding day Fronds of fern were flower girls Their dresses frayed And the rice replaced with earth Love was my only journey until the dark swallowed me whole Now no one will return me to your door On my wedding day Limbs of trees strained to receive Forget-me-not bouquets Though many called them wreaths But of all the seasons Winter always tells the fewest lies And on snowy days I'd slowly fade in folds of bridal white Can a love start in a bloodless heart Can it shelter my life in its shade Will no one tell me why I was fated to die The night before my wedding day? On my wedding night Beneath a waning moon I lay Still as an ammonite With thick coverings overlaid I dreamed we'd been surrounded by Peacock broods and damsel flies With lilies pressed upon my breast And silver in my eyes On my wedding night I lingered long but lay alone No hint of morning light No dew upon the lawn There's a wilderness within these walls This box of cold unanswered calls Though desire lives on and survives the form, It won't ever feel the dawn. Can a love start in a bloodless heart... Now my wedding gown Is on a scarecrow in a field Won't you take it down And lay it by my grave concealed Of all the seasons Winter always tells the fewest lies And on snowy days I slowly fade beneath folds of bridal white
11.
12.
A love letter came this morning, I told her I no longer wished to rent. I'm taking a break from the human race And giving up God for lent. I've been burnt enough times to realise That nothing resists fire like ash And the sour honey of empty promises Makes a corrosive kind of splash. If you dusted my heart for fingerprints You'd find more than just your own, I'm building something real in here Stone by stone. The street signs are all handwritten As if they're still subject to change, Vultures and priests fight over the dying But I'm sure a deal can be arranged. I've been searching for something authentic In the scraps my dreams leave behind, So you want to die among those idols do you? Well you'll have to get in line Until the trees shush their own rustling And the insects diminish their drone, I'm building something real in here Stone by stone. You creep between creeds Like a crab changing shell While I'm more like a snake shedding skin, If you believe that the past is something that lasts Well darling, think again. I took your heart And stripped it for parts Then replaced it with something more tough, And though I was never that good to you I reckon I was good enough. Now I feel the age of the Earth in the hairs on my skin And its murmur in the marrow of my bones, I'm building something real in here Stone by stone. Let's drag the drapes off the dais To staunch the wounds of the age, Plug up the drains with all that remains Of the solemn, the sober and the sage. We'll wring out the rag of our troubled time And persuade Providence to postpone, We'll seize the machines of our martyrdom Stone by stone. These windows have all been painted With the same view on both sides. You say one day there will be Hell to pay, Well you can tell Hell to name it's price. I want to be absolved for all my intentions And have my decent deeds undone Because the only way I'm getting to Heaven now Is as somebody's 'plus one'. It'll take more wine than they've got in there To turn God's House into a Home, That's why I'm building something real in here Stone by stone.
13.
I was running from the shadows when I saw you cast two. The more you give me, the more I've got to lose. Foes and friends differ in their forms of attack: One goes straight for your heart while the other stabs you in the back. I'm heading for a fall but you can still grab a lift, Our love may have died but it hasn't yet gone stiff, We two have been through a dozen different hells, Now it's an insult to the glory of your sickness to get well, When you hide these things from me I can tell. Time was still teething and fiends were fair-weather Before we flew on wings made of skin and not feather, There's no sense in crying before the milk has been spilt So let's skip the deed darling And go straight to the guilt. Because the promises you etched on the water Won't change when the rain comes and adds to the pool, You may feel like a lamb led off to the slaughter But don't tell me you're bleeding, Don't tell me you're bleeding, Don't tell me Cos I'm bleeding too. Now we're digging in shifts for the meagre elite Who say life is God's gift but He's still holding the receipt. We're all living in the place where ghosts come to die So don't tell me you're bleeding, Don't tell me you're bleeding, Cos I know you're bleeding me dry.
14.
There are those in the world that choose to die for what they're feeling But those feelings would never choose to die for them. If emotions had skin then half of mine would be peeling Like petals departing the stem. There are no degrees of greatness, There's just greatness and then there's the rest. Luck is my drug, I just need another hit, One tiny taste and that'll be it. We're all formed in the forge of the rotten parts of heaven Without ever being told what we're designed to be. It looked like it took a lot of time to learn all those lessons But now Time won't learn anything from me. Because I dreamt of a day when Fate lost its teeth And on pillows we lay with them hidden underneath. Luck is my drug, I just need another hit, One tiny taste and that'll be it. Now every soul I see wears the stain of superstition, So gloriously pointless like a retrospective premonition. Let's all dive where it's deepest and speed where none have sped, We'll ride the wave while it knows no ebb. Before Time's tidal lines leave their trace on my face With memories that linger like a stale aftertaste. Luck is my drug, I just need another hit One little dose and that'll be it. Just one tiny taste And that'll be it.

credits

released March 11, 2016

All songs written by Louis Barabbas
Produced by Biff Roxby
Mastered by Dan Watkins
Recorded at WR Audio, Manchester UK (www.wraudio.co.uk)

Players:
Louis Barabbas - Vocals, Guitars, Alto Saxophone, Autoharp and Bodhran
Biff Roxby - Tenor & Bass Trombones, Cello, Tuba, Synths and Various Noises
Phill Howley - Drums and Percussion
Joel Roberts - Double Bass and Electric Bass
Fran Lydiatt - Piano, Organ, Keyboards and Accordion
Kirsty McGee - Flute, Bass Flute, Saw and Glockenspiel
Fanny de Ruiter - Backing Vocals on "Faith In Myths"
Liz Green - Vocals on "Musical Box"

Sleeve Design by Matilda Smith
Nature Photos by Grebo Gray
Inlay Photo of L.B. by Christine Keating

www.louisbarabbas.com
www.debtrecords.net
www.wraudio.co.uk

© & ℗ Louis Barabbas & Debt Records 2016
Most Rights Reserved
The copyright in this sound recording is owned by Louis Barabbas & Debt Records. Copying and lending is encouraged. Unauthorised hiring, reselling, public performance and broadcasting, however, is prohibited.

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Louis Barabbas Manchester, UK

Louis Barabbas is a writer, performer and firefighter, best known for caustic love songs and energetic stage shows.

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