HEY EXIT “Slow Names 2” C50
(Turmeric Magnitudes)



The simple drawing on the cover says it all. Two birds, one perched regally, not a worry in his head, the other, levitating supine, with similar headspace; if not dead, surely making it’s way on out to the other side.

Allow me to read between the powerlines:

Side A
Tetuzi Akiyama’s guardian sparrow has grown pregnant with sorrow, hypnotized by distant church bells, the way full force gale and deluge take turns bending overtones to uneasy warble as they crawl clumsily through the lone, cracked window in their barren apartment. Songbird has given up matching TA’s patient plodding, those slow steel wires taking their sweet, sweet time to die, a new reverberation birthed just in time to see great grandfather’s death rattle shake the driest side of said windowpane. The city outside is drowning chaos, the lone swaying tapered candle within proudly lights a dust-free circle of minimal warmth on the floorboards by TA’s feet.

Side B
Tetuzi Akiyama’s agreement was this; I will feed you and play for you and keep you dry, but if you want to see the world, that sick world out there, the window is always left open just enough to permit exit. In the meantime, do accompany me as you see fit.

Songbird dreams his “escape”, journeys through electrified amplification and processing, makes friends with undesirables, gets a stick-&-poke tattoo that quickly gets infected, narrowly avoids a watery grave more times than he can count, sleeps it off under a park bench and “wakes” to the sound of his ribs cracking under a feral cat’s hunger-weakened jaws.

This recurring nightmare wakes him every night and the tape ends just before he sings and sings and sings.

See: field recordings, Tetuzi Akiyama worship, overtones, destroyed amps, tone v. texture, how many sounds can you get from that guitar?, Not Safe For Sleeping

and/or   


- - Jacob An Kittenplan