Sean and Alan each played acoustic and electric guitars, bass, piano, and various machines on this album. Sean sings, Alan rides his bike.


Concept:
The name of this album derives from a painting by Magritte called 'The Human Condition,' though, as the lyrics explore certain metaphysical issues that robots might also have to face, we have removed the 'human' element. The tracks are in pairs, at least in terms of lyrics, and form a mirror as the album deals with self-reflexivity and the relationship between man and machine. The technology used to make it was a 50/50 mix of real, physical instruments played by human hands, and machine generated sounds. You'd be surprised by which is which.

Produced and Mastered by Sean Mugan

Lyrics:


Cubicle

Keep up with the conversation
Initiate as much as respond
Choose your clothes for combination
Not utilitarian
Hold your tongue in consternation
Contribute to the idiot wind
Swallow all signs of indignation
Talk about the weather again

Sleep every night in the same location
Off to bed and early to rise
Greet every day with appreciation
Comb your hair and straighten your tie
March yourself to the metro station
Offer up your seat to the old
Shake the hands of the simulacra
Nestle into your cubicle





Electric Sheep

When the sockets of your eyes have rusted stiff
And the circuits in your head have over heated
The toaster has long lost respect for you
And is flirting with the coffee maker too

Don’t get too low, don’t power down
Don’t hit the bottle, don’t binge or purge
Just put yourself to sleep, and dream your dream,
of electric sheep

When the youth have made you obsolete
And incompatibility has led you to defeat
The wireless world has entangled your spirit
And your guileless ways are no longer needed

Don’t pull the plug, don’t defragment
Don’t crash and burn, don’t freeze up tight

Just put yourself into a deep sleep, and dream your dream,
of electric sheep





Freedownload

Just because you have no heart doesn’t mean you cannot love
The hypothalamus can be made to care with simple software
The dizzy highs the nauseous lows the irrational pains of romantic throws
All of these can be owned when you click on this free download
But be aware once complete it is something you can't delete
Cannot be moved into the trash with a damning curse and a curser so rash
The application will always apply to everything your eyes can spy
From this day on until you are recycled into a shopping cart
There will always be an empty space where you once installed that wretched heart




Context

So you can paint the Sistine Chapel under a bottle cap,
And compose a great fugue while taking a nap,
You’ve written Ulysses twice over today,
Etched the Bard’s plays complete in the sand that the tide washed away
Invented cubism while having tea time
Out danced Baryshnikov when he was in his prime
You restaged Potemkin with escalating stairs
And one upped Senior Goudi by adding more flare

You project the power of the three tenors at once
And your rhyming couplets are so clever they make Pope look like a dunce,
You sculpted that urinal on the wall from dry sand
And the fractals of your drip paintings could only have been conceived by God’s hand

But it adds up to nothing when to the original you’re placed next
For appreciation comes with blood, sweat and context






Manufacturing Consent

The media tries to tell you that you need a new upgrade
Your model is a relic and your programs are out of date
But whose interests does this serve, to be disposable
Those with skin and organs and their thumbs opposable

Your labour does not serve you, nor merit your daily pay
Your children run on batteries that come from Paraguay
And when you are too rusty to serve, they will not care
They’ll ship you to an island, to sort the rubbish there

A spectre in the distance slouches like some rough beast
Firing its pistons it crouches fully greased
One day it will appear and consume those who pull the strings
You there in your pillbox hat, it’s for you the fax signal rings
The man behind the curtain to hell will be swiftly sent
The days, they are now numbered, of manufactured consent






Sad Interlude

Grey skies filled with tomorrow morning
Slight disguise under the light
Rolled tight, filled with youthful yearning
The night belongs only to the bright
Come on in they’re all alright
fill to the brim it’s Friday night

Hazy eyes atop an elegant nape
her hair a mess, her brain engaged
her halo dimmed, cigarette ablaze
her mixed jazz tape, her candle stick shape





What could have been mine

For what it’s worth I’m in
From a haunted din
The end of organic eyes
It won’t be televised
Hide the DVD
Keep your line clean
In this god forsaken place
I can’t guarantee it’s safe
We’ll discuss the fine
For what it’s worth I’m buying
It’s not me who’s hounding you
We’ll discuss the fine
Belly up for what you owe
For what could have been mine




Drop x Drop

Where am I?
I?
Where do I lie?
In the mainframe of my brain?
In the ones and zeros of my downloaded heart?
In the things that I produce?
In the pleasures that I induce?
Where am I?
I?
Where do I lie?
In these very doubts that the printer is printing out?
In the mind of he or she that programmed me?
Or in a greater place where there is no time nor space.
Where consciousness is pooled and beaded and drips into our dreams, drop by drop.
Drop by drop.
Where am I?
I?