Our Sonicbids EPK

the

exquisite

passion

of

the

mind

LYRICS

RELEASES: TOURIST (2009 re-release) :: MOTORMAN (Patchogue Records, 2007) :: iii (Patchogue 2006) :: JACQUES RIGAUT (Patchogue 2006) :: Other songs in performance or limited release

Notes about Venus Bogardus lyrics: Many songs began as, or else incorporate, poems by James Reich. Lyrics for several songs were tag-team written by James Reich & Hannah Levbarg. Songs draw from external literary and artistic inspirations as well as from the band's own fiction, poetry and experiences. The latest album, Tourist, draws heavy inspiration from art and poverty, as well as from the life and writings of Isabelle Eberhardt, Paul and Jane Bowles, Kathy Acker, as well as the fiction of Barry Malzberg, J. G. Ballard, the poets and punks in 70s New York, modern-day pioneers and more.

SONGS FROM TOURIST

1. ELEVATOR
   We have something to do with the city Dark dress and a Chrysler (crystal shake) All night in a diademed chrome stem Tall buildings and parties to penetrate We crawl into the elevator We just want to get off (get off) Our love was made in a Factory Kiss Couch and Empire State Culture/ruin Photo/physics Future/novel Don't look/don't look That witch on the next floor breaks down Broadway wig and murder gown (dead star) Wall Street howling with animals Manhattan, bad seeds and caviar Back crawl into the elevator We just want a good time (good time) And I dreamed the gargoyle fell Spitting teeth across the sidewalk Can't afford to leave here Can't afford to stay Don't want the city Just want it our way We're not attracted but we try to blend in It's like you know, we're so so, (yeah yeah yeah) All night in a high-rise horror show Hip rumours and black tie conspiracy theories We crawl into the elevator Blueprints for an arthouse dance craze Good view of the President's necktie My wife is an architect (we get by)
2. ISABELLE
   You want oblivion Strange flowers in the Judas trees - Scorpions in the Embassy Nomad distinctions Melancholy in your photograph - The two of us in an eidograph They want an answer Wire money for investigations - smoke dreams of annihilation In your rejection As rich as any girl can be in - Your nihilism and your poetry New hipster mixtape hell Projection: me and Isabelle Write off the wasteland over me Our ghosts are moving constantly Remake the city Top down on a screaming Lincoln - Zapruder loops on the television She's theoretical Jackie crawls on an open casket - Back brace and a murder jacket In suspension Blank stares from your trench coat zeros - Strange wounds when they screen your ego Penetration Sex static in a painted kiss - Why keep running round like this? Erotic landslide Strange drowning in Algeria - Some travel is immediate Across the water Collisions of our atavism - A spider's house of anachronism It's in our language Minarets of the occupation - Lost journals of the destination We are out of here Disguised in an atonal friction - We're dreaming an eternal fiction
3. CORDOBA (©CALE/ENO)
4. 5 OUT OF 6
   Anaesthesia The more and more is less and less Euthanasia The money shots, the drastic flesh DANANANA Oh, now the world is filled With a million screaming things But there is no one here Telling them what it all means But hey, she worked it out on her own Hey, she finally understands: Hey, no pain when yr in the zone She's gotta take it like a man Pedal down to catch obscene Missed the part that turned your head South Pacific beauty queen Wipe your eyes, yr almost dead No kiss-kiss/machine-head shift Behind aroused electric walls She wrote it on her fist: Everyone just wants to be loved Slow drowning: please, not this Everyone just wants to be loved
5. TOURIST
   Strange clothes in the desert Red nights in the new transvestite sun This my dress this my sex This Tangier this Marrakesh Your ache becomes a film But so does everything Snakes around my flaming hair This my hex malaria Labour pain of snow Gorgon letting go This heart of leather jackets Red nights in the jackal-headed sun This my pass this my port This my dream this New York I am a forgery I dress transparently Nostalgia for yourself Hydra hungry in Times Square Don't please anyone Don't be anyone
6. FIERCE 70S TOMBOY
   Mohawks Buzz cuts Pompadours Virago Watch your mouth, sailor Drowned girls are tough, like Norman Mailer Ostracism spits the lighter fluid They told you no, so you want to do it Fierce 70s Tomboy Fierce 70s Tomboy (pirates the thrift store) Drag king jeans Grip test machines Shipwrecked skulls Bathroom stalls From the Siam Straight to Brighton She abandoned her, left the light on Motorcycle spits the lighter fluid They told you no, so you want to do it Fierce 70s Tomboy Fierce 70s Tomboy (pirates the boys' fear) Abandon ship ladies!
7. 2 SERIOUS LADIES [READ IT]
   The game is called: "I forgive you for all your sins." Trade for a shack - kiss the family home goodbye Oh, Lucy, I have to have you by my side We'll live on water and bread - I find it necessary To do this right, like I used to play with little Mary Oh, Jane! Where have you been all my life? Solitude is only stronger with you Oh, Jane! Where have you been all my life? We stand outside the walls of fear Ocean at dawn, kiss Pacifica's thigh Wilder and wilder and then he's gone Drink and grab - but everything slips by The girls and monkeys in my Colón I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE DOCKS AT NIGHT SOLITUDE IS ONLY A GAME WE PLAY I AM NOT A FLY IN YOUR VASELINE SOLITUDE IS ALL WE EVER FIND Salvation! Goering's on the move again Preoccupation! Frieda's fading fast, now Blind journeys - Two Serious Ladies Lost in New Jersey without a car
8. NEW *GLAM* UNDERGROUND [namesake]
   I fell asleep for a month! It's more glamorous, anyway! Cut the brakes! No repair, no solid chain! (Watch out!) Once was fine Swiss models rust in the rain I'm not buying anything He doesn't say much, does he? It's more glamorous, anyway! How much for a Sex Pistols ticket If I use remote control? Remote control Put your old money where my mouth is Remote control Put your old money up my asshole We do it all ourselves - it's more glamorous, anyway! Escape, escape! Dream caddies and Super 8 A scalpelscape An open vein and a piece of cake (and a free bar)

top of page

SONGS FROM MOTORMAN

NOTES TO THE ALBUM: Spoken-word tracks (3, 7, 10) and extracts (1) are from the 1972 novel Motorman, read by the author, David Ohle, and set to music composed by Venus Bogardus (interview here). David Ohle is also the author of the 2004 novel The Age of Sinatra. Some inspirations include the shutdown of the analog signal, Billy the Kid, works by Steve Reich and Philip K. Dick, beachside acrobat-hustlers and more.

1. MOTORMAN [demo version appears on The Wiretapper 17 (March 2007), the compilation CD of The Wire Magazine]
   Dry shit in the fire Off to find my doctor Find Cock in the pollen I'm approaching human Remoter and distant The motor insistent This trip never stops this door never opens the jellyhead outside my room repeating scene that signals doom Three suns have come up Government ballgames In a real month I lost electrical power And consecutive Sundays froze me over never pick up the same jellyhead twice I did and the features Fell off the lobes I opened the jellies In an ether grove
2. BIRDS
   Torn curtain of birds, and poster stain An actor's voice like porcelain She trades him for death wax and pirouettes Spotlights skulls and silhouettes Birds, birds, birds, birds. Silk sockets of dress, cochineal Hot line to bloodbank, oh, god you kneel Cruel moons and elision, stuttered line Make up for the lesions, switchblade spine I brought you souls Like a bird brings worms. They never listened to me When I said: Don't let me out Cut theatre of doll parts, anodyne Automatic deportment, lantern time Wings hiding the revolt, wings crowded with noise Preparing the ghost girls, preparing the boys
3. MR. BUNCE'S JELLYHEAD AGENT (extract)
4. AUTOCLAVE
   In motor cars we were émigrés We write from a broken needle gun They want to take our memories The text on you and me Memories won't get you out of gaol But they might fetch you a cigarette Autoclave, autoclave The poet and the ingénue The run with a stolen tattoo gun They're poisoning the shopping mall The waste of you and me You cannot bring us back again We're feral girls and rocket boys We're gonna strike the different trains Erasing you and me how much like a child this machine
5. ANALOG UNDERGROUND
   Ten thousand leagues, a sea of dead signal They killed the transformers, we put up our own One town, a thousand - the digital blanket A cathode ray tube trying not to drown Black and white/underground/analog/all around Black and white/underground/under waves/all around Pounding the pavement, plumbing the junkyards Stop when they're all safe: every last screen There's no government performance - let's say we forgot that Screaming with white noise, time to play mean What's in there? I only want my analog My glowing catalog, my bygone days New pirates braving the seas of forgetting They're bringing me home now in the good old fashioned way
6. VENICE VINCE
   He slingshots over the sand Tight shirt and PCP Like a fraction of a magazine An athlete tying off Venice Vince, do you remember? Native pickups telephones Coffee shops and personal ads Burns a hole in your horoscope Bars shine in mercury On leather boots like diamond dust On your raunchy father's horse On leather boots like your mother's ash On your father's raunchy horse Do you remember Vietnam? Do you remember K D Lang? Venice Beach beneath a grey sheet Silver kids twisting in the wind Hanging from grey rings Venice Vince and his Better Sling through targets of last night, Last year or never
7. TAKE WING, MOLDENKE (extract)
   
8. THE AGE OF SINATRA [READ IT]
   Sinking, but singing from the radio This is raw meat this is a crystal set This is a pistol this is a death egg, now In the age of Sinatra, things were good - but no one remembers Signals a new riot in a winter skull Eating the sirens eating the necronauts Eating the remedies eating the Kennedys, now The age of Sinatra is sickening in first class furs The age of Sinatra is shivering inside syrettes The age of Sinatra rides a ship inside a curse The age of Sinatra will not share its cigarettes No one, no one but the radio You, you in your hair-smoke high
9. QUIEN ES
   Who is that spitball shadow? Who is he who rides the gallows? Who is that harelip buckshot bastard? I took them down Nail me a pitbull picture Nail me a lacquered future Nail me to something like a childhood Then tear it down Jaw crack the jackdaw crypt Let me pretend it's Egypt Scream my soul against the stars Just like a shell A cannonball Write me a poison letter Write me and I'll be better Write me the poster boy of zeros You sold me out Jaw crack the jackdaw crypt Let me pretend it's Egypt Scream my soul against the stars I will not die I took them down

top of page

SONGS FROM iii

iii is an album of songs recorded by James Reich and Hannah Levbarg, using programmed drums, in the living room above Secession Books, the shop the couple used to run. The songs were recorded in the week between Christmas and New Year, 2005/2006. The album is thus entitled as reference to preface pages of a book, as it was the third home-recording iteration of several songs, but before the 'formal' start of the band (namely, with first drummer Annie Gardiner). Several of these songs have appeard on BBC radio and various compilations released since 2006. This album received numerous glowing reviews, except from Chuck Eddy, who slagged it off in his 8/10 review of Motorman. Songs on iii and unpublished songs, at end, include reverence for John Rechy, the close plexus of Fire Island society in the 70s and its reverberations through later decades and generations, William Burroughs, the lives and deaths of dadaists Jacques Rigaut and Arthur Cravan, Valerie Solanas, Anne Sexton, Le Tigre, adolescence, Kaspar Hauser, urban American freeways...

1. WHAT YOU KNOW
   I'm tired of living in the city If you don't know what that means, I'm not telling you London in her death throes Scenes from the afterglow Downtown the cracks will show The bastards in Soho Hold on to what you know Don't let them take it, no They don't tell you so Girlfriends are good to go Tigers on the radio Feminist electric show Take back the neon glow Remake your punkrock show This is the scene you know Hold on the undertow
2. JACQUES RIGAUT (see JACQUES RIGAUT single lyrics)
3. TALES: FROM A FIRE ISLAND (dedicated to Felice Picano)
   From Tennessee to puberty And the boredom of Paul America Egon's erotic elite The blind joy of his little angels En masse entourage Burning art and sand and drugs Tales: From a Fire Island En masse entourage Burning skin and sex and drugs Heroes of all we could have been But wouldn't you know It's 20, 30, 40, 60 Cut to a fraction Of what we could have been Asleep upon the neon sands Like washed up sailors dragging the anchors through an arm A safety painting to ward bad news This is not a test, but, here are the results The castaway survivor tale He's here alive with me, away and well Like hustling John and his shirtless hotel Age's triumph in ocean's swell. Standing up.
4. THE AGE OF SINATRA (see MOTORMAN lyrics; video on home page)
   
5. WE SHOULD KILL NATURE
   I turned my back on some bleeding stations I won't denigrate my heart with love What a bloody scandal When you say that nothing dies, shut up Oh, you're a liar, shut up, shut up There is no noose like distance No knife like diffidence Mine was a new wave murder Suicidal art mausoleum Now we should kill nature Just like JK Huysmans For a generation of teenagers that won't eat When you say that we won't change, shut up, Oh, you're a liar, shut up, shut up, When you say that nothing ends, shut up, Oh, you're a liar, shut up, shut up
6. CREATURES
   Creatures of habit beat in the vein Shoulder-pin-shoulder nightclub in gray Don't care what's outside I'm not coming out This space is all that I have behind a hanging doubt Ghosts in the closet porcelain trade You're an adjective, well that's what you say Don't care what's outside, I'm not coming out This room is all that I have behind a hanging doubt Paint in the darkness spoiling your face Portraits grow older Dorian Gray Don't care what's outside I'm not coming out This picture's all that I have behind a hanging doubt
7. HOW EVERYTHING FALLS
   So at last you're alone with your gas inhaler You're a vacuum, just scum, but you're sharp as glitter Turn your eyes to the floor cause you don't belong Once you had the excuse, but you lost your nerve This is how everything falls: satellite ash, existential This is how everything falls: modernism - fades to Prozac And this new wave panic is the new dysphoria Nylon and infrasound, short hair and breaking down And your lipstick today gets in the way Hang on to your fictitious sickness This is how everything falls: satellite ash, existential This is how everything falls: it just fucking does
   
8. SPACE, THE BIG DIVIDER
   anaerobic king sweating in mudflats radioactive needs and something smells You're never there there's no reason, no consequence or fairplay I'm signing my name to every little problem A lycanthropic bullet a never-healing knee something smells you're in it deep Space is the biggest divider of every living creature Your playthings on the floor I tell you I think Space is the biggest divider of people and their heroes A stack of plastic rings I tell you I think I'll stand on my head a little bit longer It's my performance you're upside-down, not me I won't be back, there's no reason, no golden ring no nothing, I'm signing my name to every little problem Baby can't tell which end is up row your little boat in lather I'm all aflutter Tell me the truth: no you can't unlock my secret hideout The young get their revenge for every creeping sorrow Sweating my moods my hands come creeping out two eyes four eyes six eyes eight eyes Berserker spinning hairs come creeping out the lycanthropic kitsch ausgezeichnete Haut Space is the biggest divider of breathing bastard my orange plastic horse, I tell you I think Space is the biggest divider of every bleeding breeder my playthings on the floor your hands all in my Space is the biggest divider
9. RATS LIVE ON NO EVIL STAR
   Valerie's gallery fantasy lost its sheen she lost her sheen call the office and rat on me kill yourself with Maybelline call the office and rat on me drown yourself in Vaseline go to work say nothing Between machine and smeared insect lies crisis Anne said: rats live on no evil star
10. WOLF SPLINTERS
    wolf splinters stink in the dollhouse wolf splinters shave like a young man wolf splinters strike in the matchbox wolf splinters stitch her together take your red eyes from my room take your tongue back to your babies you look Victorian wolf splinters stink in the dollhouse wolf splinters she takes it to heart wolf splinters stuck in her underwear wolf splinters seem to be everywhere all this furniture goes down like your lipstick like your history you look Victorian

top of page

JACQUES RIGAUT, EPOCH ZERO & SAFETY PINS - VINYL SINGLE AND DOWNLOAD

1. JACQUES RIGAUT - A-side Vinyl & Download 2006 (video on home page)
   Rigaut in rubber sheets climbing his golden rope My mouth on him, he's dead After an afternoon of stealing grapes and being refused Although it's our clinic, death Hold the rule against my breast Strangers, illustrated We plot the entrance of the bullet Mark it, picturing our black scorched vortex And permit salty lips to burn together Best friends powder burns the charcoal of our hair Shading the sheets as feathers fall Don't illustrate it
2. EPOCH ZERO - B-side Vinyl & Download 2006
   I've seen hollow distress Once smothering and charred Inside-out for the sugarlight I ran across the yard Downtown with yr hairshirt on Saying nothing's hard See the stupid clientele In their stupid bars Still life in an ancient room Sailors no holds barred Now divorced from their sheets they keep ringing Fists against the stars So this is the modern world - thank you very much
3. SAFETY PINS - Download only, Rigaut recording session (video on home page)
   I've sealed my eyes with safety pins Doctor, you cannot get in In yr miner's lamp yr a lighthouse With yr cyclops ray you diagnose my sheets Someone said you can't get back What the hell ya looking at? All this emotion shaking around in the mirror Unseen hands taking me down won't let me go All these fears shaking around in the mirror Vinyl hands training my eyes to see clearer Institution paradigm VCR loops truncheons shine Pain is just a state of mind Somehow you get left behind Somehow I got left behind What the fuck ya looking at?

OTHER SONGS PERFORMED OR RELEASED IN LIMITED FORMAT

1. RESEARCH (demo version recorded with Motorman demos 2007)
   Concrete tears this car right out of the sky The boulevard throws it back again: Texas Blown light the Harlowe shape of your mouth Asphalt twists the nexus and burns like the South She's driving a rental tank He's driving a private eye Shadow stain on the shoulder The screen ages You believe that Hollywood is a place You believe the unconscious has nothing to say You believe to be modern is to fuck with disinterest You believe that God exists in a crashed car This part of the city did not exist Now we glide like weapons between the abutments This freeway killed my heart I drive cause I believe in nothing
2. DOG STAR/SHAKESPEARE SQUADRON (performed in 2006 live shows w/Annie Gardiner - drums)
   Girls with rayguns down at the thrift store Shave their scalps and dance to the arclight radio Adrenal ghosts with ripped up lipstick Torpedo faces frug to the stupid rocknroll Confidental blah blah blah Billy's poems flap like a manta ray Kick against the pricks and the arclight radio Dirty jrnls abstracts of future meat In apprehension, how like a god - we love nothing It's hard when you're pretty in prison Damaged goods are machines for boredom radio It's hard when you're pretty in prison Damaged goods are machines for boredom radio Confidential blah blah blah
3. GULF OF MEXICO (currently in performance with US lineup/Luke Carr - drums)
   The knife has fallen bloodied these hands Exiled on morphine the money's gone Pinned to a fly's wing painting a chic death The touch of the sun disgusted us Gulf of Mexico We shake and scream here Drink and dream in old Gulf of Mexico We shake and scream here drink and dream in The mural shattered tired of our hands Under a black sun this ocean Two in the blood stream four in the morning Feeling the shark's intelligence
4. GHOST MOUTH (demo version played by Gary and Richard on BBC Bristol Introducing) - coming soon

top of page