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Darling's Down

by dumaresq

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Mark Ryall
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1.
First Adopters 03:18
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Before we open the first crate We say the team affirmation ‘Let me be thankful, Let my back be strong And not give out’ Increasingly Things are pewter From a computer Analog cigarettes A monochromatic fixation I’m going to see the great lakes (I’m going to see the great lakes) Beyond the tides of refuse (swelling with tides of refuse) In a bootleg hazmat suit I printed out myself In the break room All a fantasy But in seven-minute increments I’ll believe in everything Something’s always buzzing at me I'm invited ‘Do I have to go?’ Body, mind and soul Is always aching They say ‘do your time Just do your time Time is in the mind’ But is that mind mine? Before we open the first crate We say the team affirmation
2.
Fashion Slaves 04:29
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(Something we both can love) You made it so hard to tell Quick to vilify, I’ll extricate myself You made it so hard to kill Was it lesson? Was it something else? I thought you were proud A future-proof job in an automated town Baby’s coming any day Something we both can love We can survive on this You can’t save anyone in a fatalistic bliss Me, the eternal optimist While you’re just plugging your brain in Got no soma etiquette Still we’ve arrived somehow Future-proof living, destroying laters for now He’ll be coming soon Vulnerable to your love (Vulnerable to your love)
3.
This Was (The Hospital) 02:31
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4.
Emmanuel 02:53
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5.
Cheap Narrative Device 05:34
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You believed that Jesus Christ Killed eternal pain I believed that our machines Would someday do the same But I was mistaken I was proved wrong We shared this conceit Then we fucked at eighteen And now we have proof A sentient proof Who looks just like you How long can I rot Gilding strangers’ tombs? I want to buy him everything And so do you But I couldn’t tell you What is the use? (What is the use?) How will you let him know That you don’t resent him As you rip out my throat As you rip out my throat? Do you really love him? If you did, you’d buy a goddamn house Do you really love us? If it’s true, you’d find a way to work things out (You’re always looking at me Like it’s all my goddamn fault Like we didn’t get here together You’re gonna be just like your father Just like your father Just like your goddamned father Just like your goddamned father)
6.
Three Facsimiles of the Same Corporate Restructure 01:38
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Came to realise Only I am my jailer Let them strip back the bark All the psychometric tests And the meaningless work preferences I’m aware I’m superfluous I just don’t want to cling to this life As much as you’d like And so I quit I’ll find another way Have to find another way I will find another way
7.
Only the Essentials 02:53
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Cream of sulphur Pressed against the glass plate We divided Was it automatic? Atomic town felt the fallout I was speaking at his age I was interacting We defiled ourselves It was us I can admit it now Cream of carbon What if he’s defective? I had desires I told you all about them Is this the vision You said we shared? Or is it perverted now? We defiled ourselves I saw it all Before it happened It’s too late It’s too late The exit Already passed us Cream of nitrous Were we always fated? Does your God Allow for revocation? Out of all the factories and foundries Into hanging gardens Wearing clothes you made One day I will Write the whole thing down Let some meaning Come out of all of this Please promise To raise him like we wanted I envy your faith more everyday This is not some Mistake or omission I left the car at your mother’s house
8.
How I Faked the Mars Landing 04:16
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What else is out here? We’re human debris Aluminium cladding Plastic satellites Smart generation Lest we may need Some saving And venerating Would you like to know How I How I Got away? I could wrongthink For epochs Time and salt You were not stranded In a red grave You drank the water You found Would you like to know How I How I Got away?
9.
In a Field 05:58
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So what did you learn? I guess not to borrow What I’ve no hope to return And what did you leave? A smoke haze And a cavalcade of dunces Fixated with dancing It’s true I was in love But with process Never what I could produce So I was eaten away And reborn in green In parts of land The sea forgot to claim And I have a pagan rejoice Soak my fields in man-made rain It still rocks the living cradle It still functions just the same I know what I’ve left I killed a lot of things So I could save the rest Has he asked who I am? Does he wonder? Whose intangible hand he reaches for In my yearly hologram? And if he needs anything He has the pick of the spoils All the riches I collect But not things I can’t give Not the thing that I ain’t And I have a pagan rejoice Soak my fields in man-made rain It still rocks the living cradle It still functions all the same And I raked out all the ashes From this microstate I’ve made I’ve been warring my whole lifetime So to peace I am estranged So what did you learn? That I could do it better If ever I return

about

I accept in writing this kind of letter I risk sullying whatever incorporeal, mystic relationship I have to the songs on this album (and, songwriting being a medium through which we’re able to express these types of intangibles, there’s a certain arrogance in even attempting to convey the same in 500 words). I further accept, on behalf of my future-self, how inarticulate and sentimental and just plain wrong my words may seem in their desperation to explain. Because, really, all this letter is meant to express is how special and important this album is to me. And that requires some ugly, prosaic dirge… so be it!

I recorded this album in Brunswick, Victoria (where I live) and Goondiwindi, Queensland (where I reside as I write this) between March and April 2020. The name of the album, ‘Darling’s Down’, is an overt reference to the ‘Darling Downs’ (colloquially ‘the Downs’), a farming region beyond the Great Dividing Range in Southern Queensland, Australia, and the place I grew up (although some may argue that my hometown of Goondiwindi is actually in the ‘Southern Downs’ or ‘Western Downs’, the terms are used interchangeably). The narrative of the album takes place there, nowhere specific, but somewhere, between the hills, and the floodplains, and the acres upon acres of sorghum.

Though I wrote much of the music for the record in 2019, the role of COVID in catalysing my mad-dash return across state borders (assortment of sound machines clanging the whole 1300km journey) to my hometown, and thus crystallising the overarching lyrical themes of the record, should be acknowledged. It is entirely a product of that moment in time. Out of necessity, gear was restricted. One Audio-Technica mic, a shitty Cort with old strings, a Korg Volca Beats drum machine, and my mex-standard Fender Mustang bass account for 95% of the sounds on the record. The creaks and sighs of my parents’ house, the clangs of my family in the kitchen, the birds in the garden outside (so many noisy birds!) became their own instrument. They still sound around me now. They’re a moving, breathing evocation that was necessary to include.

Just before I wrote this letter, I went into town to get a coffee and saw a young couple that could very well be who this album is about. And though the failure of the protagonists in my account might read as tragic, I don’t see it like that. The thing that I want to communicate most about regional life through the arc of this album is the ubiquitousness of struggle. And it’s a beautiful struggle, against the elements, against the isolation, against the land, against the apathy of city-centric bureaucracy. I sense and admire these struggles in a removed way, slightly out-of-focus. I comment on these things much like an expat, which I guess I am. And yet, I am also authentically, inextricably from here, as much as any can claim, or at least as much as I feel it to be true.

This little record, a record I only could’ve made now, in this fugue we all inhabit, has become my love letter to place, a peculiar ode to the struggle of a young family in an esoteric farming community in Southern Queensland. And maybe you’ll see something of yourself in that. A thread of universality. That’s my wish. It’s no more important than that, really.

Joe (Dumaresq)

6 June 2020.

credits

released September 25, 2020

DUMARESQ

Joe Kneipp: primary artist (all tracks); vocals (tracks 1-3, 5-9); guitar (all tracks); drum programming (tracks 1-3, 5, 7-8); bass (tracks 1-3, 5, 7, 8); piano (track 4); engineering (all tracks); production (all tracks); mixing (tracks 2, 5, 8).

TECHNICAL

David Quested: mixing (tracks 1, 3-7, 9); production (tracks 4-5); additional percussion

Theo Carbo: mastering (all tracks)




For my family. Without them, I'm nothing.

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dumaresq Hobart, Australia

dumaresq is a Hobart/nipaluna-based artist.

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