seemingmusic

[seemingmusic]

WHERE WERE YOU (parts 1 & 2)

New single tomorrow morning on Bandcamp. It's about the way now becomes then, the people we lose in the process, and the compromises made.

Election day is coming up. Please vote.

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WHERE WERE YOU (parts 1 & 2)

[part 1]

Where were you in ’22? The end of the honeymoon The mask is off and the creature is coming through Out of the void that cuts between the eye and the screen

What does she see, young futurist, 1913 Crystal ball, looking down on me— Who damns them all among the fallen— She who fell in with the yelling shiny metal boys? Yes they knew there’s an art to noise That now’s where the time ahead destroys the ashen past But they left their caskets wide Half of them turned fascists while the other half died

Why’s it that a ticket out Is always a Faustian deal with the devil? The field’s not level; whatever— Give me the lever, just give me the lever Just give me a lever and a place to stand I can move the world, I can move the world Give me a lever and a place to stand And I'll move the world, and I'll move the world

But where am I? And why’s this mirror here? Why does it shine with the disappeared? World War One and all to come The spiral swallows up a hundred years Is it wrong that I long for correction? Some invective retrospective court To flex a hand around the necks of Bush, Thatcher, Musk Bastards all who stacked the decks

So who is next? Not Benedetta Cappa, or the table-rapping Foxes yet Tried to escape from their boxes Without a say in their age or their sex Besides, who can test whether the perception I got is correct? Whether I’m inventing a special effect? Am I a lone tall tree in the woods unwrecked unchecked from dusk to sunset?

Where were you in ’22? The death of solitude The end of your tolerance for the call of a prophet Who fed you dreams or the fear of a bloody coup But how did you get here? What did they do to you? And when is now? I mean really, what in hell is now? A junkie who, caught between the memory of flight and terror of the night Begs: what can my money do?

That’s what I get for having two eyes to read with, see with Maybe size up the summer roughness From above this burning forest, California’s poorest, smoke on all horizons Who let all the flies into this version of my life? Am I dying? Where were you in ’22? Go get your alibi, son Make it a good lie

Where were you in ’22? Where were you in ’22? Got one more window to look through Where were you?

[part 2]

The Angel of History turns an eye to the graveyard Growing and churning without a border or safeguard But blown back by the force of the past, The tyrannical gnashing of teeth and the panicking death screech, The Angel of history is paralyzed by a shock to the spine called progress Trinity bomb test, 1945 Everybody ever alive, when you rise, I’ll fall and apologize

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I dreamed of Kemdi Amadiume, where I could see the future And I’m sorry was I all I could tell her Creation is sorry; you deserved better I’m so sorry, sorry The words echo wide to the first ever suicide in the Kalahari And everything tumbling after Hell of a way to conclude the first chapter

So where were you in 22? Who am I talking to? The slaughterhouse animals in the cages all going blue Illegal to film but they’re killed for you to chew And the angel is crying at the Bronx Zoo Are you talking to the meteor in space You’re hoping will break through, come and erase Cut the Gordian knot, plot dissolves, columns fall All our problems going small?

Or are you talking to your parents whom you even still make excuses for 'cause you’re in the will? Executor, testatrix, execution in the matrix Am I talking to entitled generational wealth? The feedback loop spins a Fabergé shell Gilded with rubies and amber gels Waiting to be smashed, cast a spell

Hell, I guess what I mean is take yourself back to fourteen The first and only evening you could see with clarity right and wrong And share with me: do you owe that kid a song? Or were you killed by the age-fifteen version And the guilt that made age sixteen worse And seventeen, eighteen like dominoes And when they come, can you tell where the kid goes?

Are you swallowing the previous minute down? Does this verse chew the last and spit it out? Animal to animal, cannibal to cannibal Man ate the neanderthal What claim do you have at all? Don’t blame the black hole’s gravity well Don’t blame the crocodile eating itself But where you in '22 when the curtain finally finally finally fell?

[seemingmusic]

1897, Olive Eleanor Custance, a.k.a. Lady Alfred Douglas

[seemingmusic]

unburied

Happily, we have regained access to this little Tumblr account. We might not use it very often, but it still was a bummer to have it hacked into the void for the last month. Time to start posting and scrolling like it's 2011.

<3

Alex

[seemingmusic]

[seemingmusic]

The Birdwatcher’s Guide to Atrocity

FINALLY, FINALLY IT’S HERE: YOUR EXCUSE TO GO PERMANENTLY MAD.

SEEMING’S THIRD ALBUM IS RELEASED.  

BUY IT HERE.

STREAM IT HERE.

Menacing but vulnerable. Furious but intimate. Co-produced with renowned avant-garde percussionist Sarah Hennies, The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity shines eerie light through the cracks of life under capitalism. In effortless accents of chamber pop, postpunk, and clattering synthpop, the album radiates political revolt, personal remembrance, and disarming compassion. Never before has Seeming's post-anthropocene futurity been more appropriate.  

Seeming is the project of Alex Reed, with Aaron Fuleki. They had previously been in the band ThouShaltNot. Alex is the author of a 33 1/3 book as well as Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music.  The band has recorded with Merzbow, Sammus, Bill Drummond, Alphaville, and many others.

Seeming’s previous LPs are Madness & Extinction and SOL: A Self-Banishment Ritual.

#seeming #music #postgothic #gothic #leftism #assassination #depression #2020 #despair #the hermit #go small #album #thoushaltnot #industrial music #chamber pop #postpunk #capitalist realism #birdwatching #atrocity #artoffact records #klf #end studies

[seemingmusic]

GO SMALL

I recorded the vocals for “Go Small” outdoors in the Pyrenees mountains one morning last summer. The birds you hear are real. It’s a song about clinging to a vital sliver of sanity by focusing only on what was right in front of me: a room, a garden, my own hands. The drums feature Sarah Hennies and Aaron Fuleki. Its video was filmed in lockdown, at a shack in the woods of Ithaca, NY. When the world is run by cruel and greedy men, it’s hard to “go small,” but that intimacy and focus really saved me. This is a song for recentering—all without forgetting your rage. It feels like life under quarantine. It feels like 2020.

[seemingmusic]

I WAS TAUGHT THE LANGUAGE OF THE OLD GODS

#seeming #music #single #endstudies #industrial music #funk #destroy capitalism #smash patriarchy

[seemingmusic]

THE BIRDWATCHER'S GUIDE TO ATROCITY a 2020 album by Seeming with ten ways to survive until tomorrow 

Now up for pre-order, with the new single “Go Small.” Menacing but vulnerable. Furious but intimate. Co-produced with renowned avant-garde percussionist Sarah Hennies, The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity shines eerie light through the cracks of life under capitalism. In effortless accents of chamber pop, postpunk, and clattering synthpop, the album radiates political revolt, personal remembrance, and disarming compassion. Never before has Seeming's post-anthropocene futurity been more appropriate. For fans of Low, Depeche Mode, Chelsea Wolfe, Hurts, Einstürzende Neubauten, Twin Shadow, Emma Ruth Rundle, IAMX, Leonard Cohen, ANOHNI, HEALTH. 

[seemingmusic]

<<<I WAS BORN TO MAKE MY KIND EXTINCT>>>

#EndStudies

[seemingmusic]

LIVE WEBCAST ACOUSTIC CONCERT TONIGHT

8pm eastern time, exclusively for Patreon members, tier-2 and up!

http://patreon.com/salexanderreed

[seemingmusic]

Your music has gotten me through the last two weeks. Thanks for making the world a little less awful.

Thank YOU for listening. Reading this gives me a little hope too.

[seemingmusic]

For my birthday, a new album & a Patreon launch!

When I was making Seeming's SOL LP, I revisited and recorded a set of unnnabashedly goth songs I'd written as a teenager—they're loose, ambitious, and youthful. I love this little album.  Hear it now at

goo.gl/2i15ZS

BUT—IF YOU WANT MORE MUSIC AND MORE CONNECTION...

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my Patreon page.

goo.gl/XjkcFH

Join to get The Gothic for FREE, and to get exclusive outtakes and demos by Seeming & ThouShaltNot, videos, livestream concerts, and writing on the history of music and subculture—plus postcards, weird poetry, and cat pictures.

#patreon #seeming #music

[seemingmusic]

I discovered The White Beyond when I was eighteen, and it moved me so thoroughly that ten years later I find myself at half two in the morning still listening to it. I've loved listening to your music grow and change over these years and I'm excited to see where your music will go, and take me, in years to come.

Thank you SO much.  That means a lot.  The White Beyond has been on my mind lately, as well as some of the older corners of the catalogue.  I think you’ll be pleased by the announcement today of a new album of old songs and the Patreon page.

[seemingmusic]

Do you have any more covers lined up? (I'd personally love to hear you cover Iris' Vacant)

“Make-me-do-a-cover” is one of the features of the new Patreon page I’m launching today!  Stay tuned! goo.gl/XjkcFH

[seemingmusic]

I noticed in "At The Road's End" there's a spoken word line and in that line the date February 10th is said. What significance does that date hold? I wonder because it's my birth date, so it stood out to me. And I'm really curious about it.

Great question. It was literally the day I happened to be recording it.  I wanted to capture a little moment of the here and now, a little sonic diary.  It was the very last thing I recorded on the whole record.

And happy birthday.

[seemingmusic]

Box of paper bullets nothing can stop the rapid fire reflection

Basically true, but I’m trying these days to move beyond war/battle metaphors. And maybe even beyond metaphor entirely.

[seemingmusic]

Who is the lead singer for Seeming? and How old is he. Love the music :)

Thanks so much! The singer is Alex Reed, or “me” as I call myself.  I’m 38, and though I’ve been putting out records since I was in high school, I’m pretty sure that the two Seeming LPs are some of the best stuff I’ve helped make.

Here’s what I look in a recent hat.