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Lawn Ornaments

by Bob Drake

supported by
Craigus Barry Esq
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Craigus Barry Esq Quite literally one of the most sonically detailed and unique albums to come out of the 2000s so far. Bob's wordplay and song structures are only matched by his highly inventive instrumentation and treatments. Favorite track: Wolf Nose Knows Nose.
Checqz
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Checqz The production trips and falls over itself into massive, sweeping, emotional, and destructive moods, then falls back to tiny, quiet hits of solo instruments at all the right moments. Many of the tracks are not easy listening enough to add to your normal background playlists (warning: there are jumpscares!), but if you listen from beginning to end as intended, the journey is a romp and the beauty and grace of the final ornament will leave you in tears. Favorite track: Our Expert's Advice.
epikhobo
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epikhobo Full of imaginative and delightful songs, with a fun sense of interconnected worldbuilding. Favorite track: Park of the Mysteries.
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1.
I won’t invite you to come and see my etchings most people don't like those but I've got the best lawn ornaments anywhere! Each of them was sculpted in commemoration of some extraordinary event I'd heard of or in which I played a part. So come up to the cottage listen to the stories of the ornaments (and maybe later have a look at the etchings) Here are the ornaments, let's hear what they have to say. I've heard it a few times so I'll just leave ye here, have a nice time now, and don't get lost...
2.
What's happened to your meerkat, why does it glow like that? You ought to send it back. Leering at us belligerently, sharpening its claws and teeth... I think we're in trouble! Where did it get that Crooke's tube it's pointing at us now? Yes we're in trouble! The people at the petshop seemed unusually glad to see it go on the day that you bought it...they must have known it was abnormally smart and strong for a member of the meerkat race and would use its superior intellect and strength for evil purposes lock your doors because we don't know where it's gone...
3.
Puttering in the piazza, heterogeneous deities flocking around balustrades, lingering in the porticus and wandering for eternities on the way to their sphinx to add the fractal fronds, fractal fronds, magnificent rack of. Wandering deities pass through spectacular colonnades flying foxes. And after the fronds are carved we'll meet upon the bemarbled belvedere and we will go flying foxes yeah we'll go flying foxes bring a libation and sunglasses.
4.
This one commemorates the Park of the Mysteries somewhere in Italy, or is it in Kentucky, you will never find it marked on any maps or listed in guidebooks, cameras don't work there and satellites can't see it... Threads of mineral water trickle onto statues in the grotto (onto their heads) vases have no niche, niches haven't got a vase in the rotunda. On the distant hills, gigantic iridescent urns scintillate in the Sun. Cerberus is fatter than the bear of stone reposing in the roses (holding a rose) Is it just a trick of light or did that dragon statue alter its position? Towers list among stones, words carved upon them, no longer legible. The patch of fog far across the valley emanates from the poisonous Hyena Hot Spring and at times from the wild canyons around us echoes a deep-throated, unknown titanic animal's call but don't worry, the park is fenced in. (NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!) Around the outdoor ampitheatre carvings of fantastical animals overlook the venue which has never known an audience or an actor but on some mystic summer evenings they clamber down from their pedestals and their plinths and get up on the stage where they clumsily dance their clumsy midsummer dance.
5.
Elsie 02:34
(Well, ah...it's too hot and it's too bright and I have trouble breathin') 'Cause she's not from around here. (You tell em pal!...tell ‘em... well, say somethin’! ) Elsie's not a cat, I'm pretty sure of that and I'm really not so sure she's not a dog (nope not a dog) She doesn't want to play (nah!) and sure does likes to lay (oh yeah!) curled up in all her arms and legs and tails (I got a million of 'em) with the yellow eyes always watching while the blue ones are all closed. (-yawn- I'm goin' to sleep) And she stays inside until it's dark and cold. It's the color of the Sun and the blend of gases in our atmosphere she's not accustomed to. Or maybe Elsie had enough for the day and doesn't really want to play maybe Elsie had enough for the day and doesn't want to play...she doesn't want to play. And she's not from around here. maybe Elsie had enough for the day and doesn't really want to play maybe Elsie had enough for the day and doesn't want to play...she doesn't want to play. ‘Cause she's not from around here.
6.
Is anyone left who can fix my machine? It's there dripping grease on the floor The malfunctioning meters and flickering displays confuse me, and I feel faint. Corrosive gases hiss from the pipes and the tanks all fissured and crumbling with rust. The Crookes tube is missing, the thief left a trail of little pawprints in the dust. No please don't tell me that it can not be repaired I'll lapse into ennui and despair I need it to carry on with my research which I've never understood at all.
7.
Here in this lonely manor you can see an old skull perched on a cushion in a cabinet in the attic. Legend says if it is removed from the house it returns on its own. How could a skull move, you might ask, it's just calcium phosphate, an unliving thing without any means of self-propulsion I asked myself the same questions and I went there myself to see... if it was true...could it move... I went and booked myself a room and one sunny afternoon crept up stealthily into the attic, to the cabinet secretly hid the skull away out upon the lonely moor then went back to see if something would happen... if something would happen... That night a petrifying fear petrified us all until I went back and got the skull and returned it to its cabinet in the house.
8.
The dictates of good taste do not permit me to reveal the location of a rare group of springs emerging from a rock formation the age and composition of which make scientists shudder. The Hyena Hot Spring and Hot Sulphurous Wolverine flow into a basin never fashioned by humans valetudinarians beware! I've been soaking every day there for years now so there's no turning back and even if there was some way to stop it I'd go on till the end (he'd go on to the end) "yes yes, very lovely...excuse me, I am a scientist... I have personally analyzed and examined these waters and find them to be limpid, saline, chalybeate and remarkably zoomorphic."
9.
Perpetual lamps are classified as a wonder of antiquity and it's no wonder, as we're about to see. Tales are told of lamps sealed into crypts where they glow, apparently, perpetually. Undisturbed and unimagined as the centuries pass till uncovered by accident or by chance. The secret of these lamps has been kept from discovery by ingenious mechanical means by which the lamps destroy themselves if an intruder approach to closely. Descending into the opening which appeared in my field after a flood, guess what I saw... at the end of a narrow passage of stone a statue of an armored bear one massive paw above an ever-burning lamp. When I stepped into this passage a system of springs in the floor caused the mechanical figure to raise its mighty paw and smash the lamp!
10.
Let the special animals I told you about show you the way, they'll lead you through the trackless woodland and leave you in the hidden meadow deep in the forest where you'll have to sit and wait for a while. Soon you'll hear the heavy tread and snuffling which tells of the approach of what's to be your guide for the next phase. Try not to be alarmed at its appearance and manor after all, soon you'll be meeting much, much, much stranger things. Listen to your guide and it will teach you the things you'll have to know to prepare for the permanent physical transformation required for admission to the Wondrous Land to come! Let's go to the Marvelous Land gimme your oops I almost said your hand it's gonna be really fabulous first you'll have to wait in the meadow a while. While you wait in the summery meadow you'll have plenty of time to stroll about the architectural folly, and admire the obelisk which is older than the very stone from out of which it's carven. Yes...I see...this architectural folly is...quite nice... and this obelisk...oh, that funny noise...and...remarkable odor... that would be my guide coming! Oh how unspeakably wonderful! Even...marvelous! Let's go to the Marvelous Land as the name implies it's really fine gonna be really fine scientists have never heard of it yet The Marvelous Land The Marvelous Land gimme your oops I almost said your hand it's gonna be so fine ("Yes it's FINE!")
11.
Taking things apart to simpler forms of matter Taking them apart to soil, verdigris, rust and dust working all day and night it’s the business of the Agents of Decay. You got your algae and your fungi, the yeasts and protozoa and bacteria breaking everything down into component parts to be recycled. They are the Agents of Decay and the oxygen and sunlight also help them disassembling everything into constituent components. Water is also required for the process and there’s a load of it in plants and animals in the rivers and the lakes and that’s what it takes for the Agents of Decay to do their: (Breaking everything down into components) (They’re breaking everything down) (Continuously working) The Agents of Decay are always working.
12.
X-ray sunrise on a plain seen through the compound eye of a lost world so far away from here would you rather go have a beer at the pub or just stand around here and contemplate ridiculosities?
13.
Why why why not?
14.
Philanthropy phosphate freeze-dried friend, pulsar puppeteer. Cat-scan chrysanthemum disc-brake dinosaur, fiberglass forklift fox No we don't know what they are but here's a wolf to have a sniff their olfactory sense is terribly advanced because a wolf nose knows wolf nose knows wolf nose knows knows nose a wolf nose knows Yeah, knows where you been can you identify the yours truly Yemen-yammering wildcat? Yeah, nose, where you been? Chop-suey cookie colossus Indo-European dealership dolphin Because a wolf nose knows knows nose wolf nose knows wolf nose knows knows nose wolf nose knows Yeah if you don't know what they are you get your wolf to have a sniff and you'll probably get your answer in a flash... their olfactory sense is terribly advanced.
15.
Here is our final ornament, glassy and prismatic obtained by my private contact at the Park of the Mysteries it's always a little warmer than the surrounding air a thrilling sensation emanates, like hissing cicadas On hot summer nights it attracts magnificent be-robed be-snouted figures silently circling around and around and we have never seen a bug nor bird alight upon it no we've never seen a bug or bird alight upon it. The figures depart at sunrise, here you can see their tracks smell the peculiar fragrance they leave behind and that's one reason why we keep it locked up in this private court and only show it to our special favored guests LIKE YOU! We believe it could be a shortcut to the Marvelous Land that we've all heard of And that's why we're meeting at high noon to soak in the Hyena Hot Spring and once the waters have taken effect we'll come back here and wait for further instructions from our experts who have assured us: "IT'LL BE FUN!" Our experts assure us: "YOU CAN BE ONE!" Our experts...our experts...
16.
Don't Worry 01:29
You won't have to sit in the piazza and cry no you won't have to worry anymore. Forget about the vapors and the wanting of breath no you won't have to worry anymore no you won't have to worry anymore. The languishing in dank dismal chambers is done no you won't have to worry anymore. Come on and help carve the fractal fronds on our sphinx! yeah you won't have to worry anymore yeah you won't have to worry anymore Now that you've got a fox you can fly! no you don't have to worry anymore.

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released June 15, 2014

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Bob Drake Caudeval, France

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