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Giraffe

by Pete Um

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1.
TIME TO USE 00:46
Time To Use When the sun comes rising up Make a list and follow it up Make a list and stick to it Through the numbers move through it As peasants in pre-industry Cleared the fields industriously This is how it is with me There was a time I felt confused But now my time is there to use.
2.
A LAST BLAST 01:29
A Last Blast My days of plenty In this shithole Maybe we should be moving out We Might get buried Under a mountain Where fire's moss and brimstone's tat Let's quit, sod 'em We'll go tomorrow A last blast A last blast! You're talking I'm walking You put your faith in a hole like that You're talking I'm walking I'm gonna walk and not look back They ask me questions As though I'm Lot's wife Is it true I had compassion for lack Because I'm frozen I cannot tell you I only wanted one last glance repeat chorus
3.
Character Is Destiny I'm gonna form a band Called Crowded Flat I'm gonna drink a lot of Guinness And get real fat I'm gonna get no pussy And stink of cat And not give a fuck About this and that.
4.
Another Orphan Nothing lasts forever Forever is limited If you wanna see history You have to get up early Came back from the Hitchin gig Did a track on my 4-track Just getting into it When my poor old tape snapped. It seems such a shame Another orphan. My poor old tape.
5.
Too Old For Sports I'm on a hiding to nothing On somebody's tears My fuel is a burden I'm lost in the woods I sit in a furnace Abusing my plug-ins Scaring myself With the power of the biro I'm too old for sports I'm pushing a carcass If I look on the bright side I'll die on the pavement The last thing I want Is the cops standing by As my loved ones are summoned And attitudes thicken The crowds, listlessly gawping Like they've one brain between them.
6.
DVLA 01:29
DVLA Forwards backwards Upwards sideways Start up the car And drive out the driveway Hey little man I think you understand I think you left yourself in the rain Hey little man I think you had a plan I think you had everything to gain Hey there soldier Does the nights grow colder You know it's hard to move in the snow You better your gun You better get someone While you still got some ammo Forwards backwards Upwards sideways Start up the car And drive out the driveway You don't need no cosmic licence It doesn't matter what you're driving DVLA.
7.
8.
MR BUMP 01:02
Mr Bump Six cans of bevy And I'm fine I judge myself by my own standards I slurp my way through time All covered up in bandage I'm Mr. Bump you see I'm up a dead gum tree I'm chewing like a raver cow I've lost the here and now.
9.
ITCHY FEET 01:21
10.
Rock Black Hole Hopeless twot What forgot The inner dude That's inside you You can't can't forget Your decent self Don't bet that debt You owe yourself Your wasted hate Your muttered shit You'll never get to grips with it You're wasting time As seconds tick You're fucking up Like a rocket prick You're the rocking dick You are well sick You're facing up Mister moan You've had your go You've spoken from your heart of mould You paint you black With your blue brush You talk it real About fucking up Yo, someone else with a clear view Could see there's not much wrong with you You may take your time like the cow you are But you make sweet milk with your guitar It's just the way you are You're a black hole star
11.
Derelict Pipe You burn my head With your cigarette voice With what you said You took my choice You take the piss Out of my derelict pipe I've got a beard of slime But I brush up nice.
12.
KANSAS 00:58
Kansas I hope Kansas Can suck me back to itself I got no standards Wizard killing himself I got small shark eyes In elephant skin I don't know when to stop I don't know how to begin.
13.
14.
The Great Black Wing Back hurts I heal poorly Absolute failure noses towards me like some tender little fish Licence people Constant threats I'm old old blood Too much, too much stuff Need new values Before the Great Black Wing Smothers the sky.
15.
16.
The Perfect Disaster I'm gonna get bitter Cos I know that I'm better Oh I'm in the shitter With my foot on the pedal If I draw any comfort I know I'm no dumbfuck I've the power to alter But it wouldn't be mine then.
17.
A Drunk Revolution Well they can take me outta here They won't find me a place They won't find me a home They will cut my links with grace They'll delete my delight They'll rob me of the night They'll flatten everything They will limit when I sing They do not understand But I understand them man They are fools in high places With their fuckin' stupid faces And If I could only think I would find the words to sing That would sing them in the dust It feels as though I must But it feels as though I can't So please gimme a hand Let's have a drunk revolution It's stupidity in solution.
18.
WHEN YR TEN 01:09
When Yr Ten When yr ten When yr ten When yr ten When yr ten When yr ten years old and your bright young soul Has just been freed or de-mysteried And you've learnt to read The whole world's book Cos that's how it looks To the genius It was me and us It was way back then When yr ten When yr ten When yr ten When yr ten But on days like these my capilliaries Have all burst to bleed On my hangdog face Like time's on skates And so is space I can't stand up straight Like I used to then When yr ten When yr ten When yr ten When yr ten
19.
My Private Ridicule You're talking my language You're wearing my clothes And physically you're similar But there's something you don't know Deep within my DNA There's a space for a missing gene It fulfils a useful function Cos it's the one that kills your dreams So I'm forced to wander Like some dippy dancing jew Or sit at my computer In my private ridicule.
20.
No-one Calls Me Anymore Hold your horses Hold the line I'll hold your hand You hold mine Run the sequence Make the mix Sound is just cement and bricks Build the structure Pop your gun No-one can insure the sun Meaning is the toy of fools remember always break the rules No-one calls me anymore No-one calls me anymore No-one calls me anymore No-one calls me anymore.
21.
People Hid In Jumpers Everywhere I go It's the same old story People hid in jumpers Like they've never heard of glory Like they don't have no business To celebrate their brain Like they might be individual But they're much too much ashamed Come on put a red shirt Let's find you some blue shoes It's not like you're in prison And you've lost the right to choose Come on little cousin Let me lend you my weird hat It won't turn you homosexual Or anything like that.
22.
SEMO 02:13
23.
Human Heart System Check Like a cautious tiger It ain't the way but what And the covert stylist Won't make a lot You have to have push I think I said that once I think I said the deed For I'm no pushy cunt There is no man-that-can For my heart's bicycle One day I'll get to B And I won't know A at all.
24.
An Indication Of The Tired Human Spirit Homework boy the clock is laughing Bad luck has fucked your life in passing Standing in the playground Smoking cold air How did the past get all the way back there? They talk the same language In a different way I have to readjust to what I missed when away Wherever I go I will never fit in I got a shy sore from where the new bit in It's just an indication of the tired human spirit When everything sounds like a Beck lyric.
25.
Caught Myself Out This is a message from your passionate friend Cos I feel like I'm nearing the end Of conspiracy forgotten about You know I think I just found myself out I think I came down to earth with a bump I came to give birth to the scum Who think that life is too easy for words Well I think that view is absurd I think that life is a general thing And I have to keep it simple to sing I'm trash and I know that I am And I should just chuck myself in the Cam Like puke from reality's mouth Cos I think I just caught myself out Cos I think I just caught myself out Yes I think I just caught myself out.
26.
Hey Hollywood It takes a lot of drink To keep a good man down And I think I'm falling down You know the project stinks I'm a sort of clown I try and laugh And they frown Hey Hollywood I'm over here We have relationship It's not clear.
27.
Revolutionary Trousers I have been told To sell my soul But I'm too old It wouldn't go And I'm too young My sense of fun Is all but done It's come and run So what's the use I'm out of juice I worked it loose What can I do I watch the world It makes me spin I shut my eyes The state it's in I'm so depressed When I get dressed I show the world It's in a mess.
28.
Stop The War! The days fall like waves On the beach of my sorrow Let's glue all my lies together tomorrow This ritual killing of time is a crime The sentence is death It's a how not a why Come on don't be silly Pull your bits together There's worse in the world Than you, you mad feller. You need three days off Some fruit and a quiche Let's just drop the war And pick up the peace.
29.
Curse The Calm Before The Storm The image has been carefully framed The authorship is not displayed The gallery does not exist The artist is a fantasist The public have not been informed In code the cops were phoned and warned Their bumbling methods have been scorned Oh curse the calm before the storm.
30.
We Don't Let Giraffes In End of the line I ran out of time Fool ran out of fuel But you don't know nothing But you might feel something If they weigh your contribution And Gabriel's lackeys laughing We know you feel embittered But we don't let giraffes in.

about

MORE PETE UM VINYL: GRIST0009: GIRAFFE

Reissue time on Grist again as 2004's supposed meisterwerk Giraffe gets a deluxe rebirth on wax, remastered and with a proper full colour cover and labels and everything, although the homemade inserts are keeping it real obviously. 250 copies, so a limited run - but not to the extent that The New Album and Babysitting The Apocalypse were (100 each). All Um records are compilations, apparently, but this is more of a discrete piece of work than most and is perhaps the better for it. It has been described as the zenith of Um's gnostic electronic rock. There's a piece of text to go with this edition written by Matt “Woebot” Ingram attached, and also a great review of the original CD-R lifted from the Kid Shirt blog. If anyone can help get this record heard, on sale or sold please contact Pete Um any way you can.

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WOEBOT NOTES:

I can just imagine Pete flicking through his old MiniDiscs: “Nah that’s too early to be from the Giraffe sessions”, or “Too late, that will never do…” Like Brian Wilson must have been sifting through tracks for the SMiLE reissue project. “Yeah well, y’see, technically speaking that belongs to Wild Honey…” Because that’s the way the way Pete works. Constantly making stuff. Stuff it seems he isn’t quite sure what to do with. Mere mortals set out to start and finish an LP but real creativity doesn’t work that way. Pete’s friend Dave Nochexx agrees to put together a compilation of his friend’s work but throws in the towel in a fit of exhaustion and rage. How to deal with the torrent of DMT-addled DATs? How the hell to marshal Pete Um? Um.

However there is something about “Giraffe”; something that deserves to be conceived as a discrete artistic object. The album is unostentatiously special. In a creative life it can happen once or twice, when the stars align and when what an artist is doing gains an unexpected cosmic resonance. Sometimes the world notices. “Giraffe” came out first in 2004. Looking back, sheesh, that was a bad year for LPs. Only Joanna Newsom’s “Milk-Eyed Mender” and Kanye West’s “The College Dropout” seem to have stood the test of time. It’s a shame then that “Giraffe” didn’t register on the landscape. It’s one of those historic travesties, like why no one clocked S.Y.P.H’s “4LP”, The Numbers Band’s “Jimmy Bell’s Still In Town” or The Monks “Black Monk Time”. It is a stone-cold classic.

Um displays here a knack for minute-long pop perfection. They have the vestige of verse, chorus and bridge but does that mean these songs should repeat each thrice? Fizzing with witty, daft, hilarious, goofy, drunk, stoned, gloomy but always self-deprecating lyrics; sonic ideas bounce off the walls. Never dreaming to outstay its welcome "Giraffe" is a universe unto itself. At its centre is the beguiling Um – the racehorse that won’t run.



Matthew Ingram

March 2013

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KID SHIRT WORDS:

Welcome to UmWorld.

This CD makes me think of sheds for some reason. Tool-boxes rather than Roland Grooveboxes. Rusting scythes, the smell of WD-40, those little scraper things that you use to de-ice windscreens in winter. (Computer) Music for Shepherds.

Um.

“I think I just caught myself out”.

Tracks. Lots of them. Lots of tracks. Logic stacked laterally. Illogical longing.

Words are shifted around to make new sentences, new meanings; a Rubic Cube of words. Sometimes it’s something that’s a little bit like poetry, but not quite – synonymic and phonetic shifts – almost puns – other/times it’s like he’s talking to himself, chatting to dead air, open-mic over Rustic Crunk, joshing imaginary friends, drinking, playfully critiquing himself or getting annoyed by something that might (or might not) have happened earlier that day; it’s like a series of entries in a diary – blogsplatter n scribbled memos-to-self – sometimes talk-songs, sometimes soulful n semi-funky: observations, moans, pronouncements… all accompanied by an array of ratcheting samples and clicky-hissy percussives, a bass-gtr or back-parlour Electro.

(Some of the songs are instrumentals.)

“A male entity announces his name,” says an anonymous snippet of voice plucked from the air. I love things that arrive devoid of context; that force you to guess, to make up a story.

Sometimes he’s tongue-in-cheek; sometimes tongue n groove.

Later, on another song, a weary, downpitched voice says, “No, I really do feel awful” and makes me think of a half-dead cartoon horse. A plodding drum-beat and forlorn-sounding series of bass-strums trudge their way across a seemingly-endless field of mud – a Flanders of the Soul – singing: “I feel so depressed / when I get dressed”. I’m feelin’ it, mate; I’m really feelin’ it.

UmMusic wears its drum-machine on its sleeve for everyone to see.

On “Too Old For Sports” he comes on like a Beck of the Flatlands, a dissolute songwriter exiled out in the reeds and bullrushes w/ a sleeping-bag and his 4-track: “EQ my soul (my piss-up)…I’m on a hidin’ to nuthin’…” / “Scaring myself with the power of a biro…” / etc.

Elsewhere, he’s like a one-man boombox version of The Residents (“Curse The Calm before The Storm”)…fractured riddims n half-melodies rubbin’ themselves against a chair-leg like a randy flea-bitten Spaniel: “I’m gonna drink a lot of Guinness / and get real fat / I’m gonna get no pussy / and stink of cat / And not give a fuck / About this and that…”

Occasionally, he lists his gear or explains how he’s mixing/tweaking the music; I loove it when Process reveals itself and, instead of demystifying the act of creation – the glamour of sound-art – it folds back in on itself adding another layer of complexity. Revelatory auto-critique as a backing vocalist, yeah!

32 tracks! – not everyone’s gonna be a winner; but there’s no shit either; nothing bores or outlasts its welcome – this is like a quiet idea-storm: a procession of thoughts, camera-angles, memories, rambles, rumbles, micro-anthems, marching songs, drinking games, broken raps, Pop-monologues, miniatures, chamberwerks, salon songs, an orchestra of shed.

But the best pieces are very fucking good indeed.

“You make sweet milk with your guitar / it’s the way you are / a black-hole star.”

I think this is 5 years old, so I’m kinda ashamed Pete only came on my radar recently. On the sleeve-notes it says: THERE IS AH WHOLEHEAP AH TALENT IN THE GHETTO THAT IS GOING UNOTICED BY THE MAINSTREAM. DON’T GIVE UP I BREDRENS AND SISTRENS, THE STONE THAT THE BUILDER REFUSED SHALL BE THE HEAD CORNERSTONE.

Kid Shirt seconds that.

“Deep within my DNA is space for a missing gene…”

Comes with some really cool drawings and a list of giraffe facts.

credits

released June 25, 2013

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Pete Um Cambridge, UK

"A master of the miniature electro-acoustic song-poem, a form he has more or less invented and crystallised himself, his work displays a sardonic wit combined with a healthy misanthropy, in marvellous micro-collages of voice, instruments, samples, and electronics."

-Ergo Phizmiz
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