The fourth burmaunderground album. The second of 2025. 

Ten songs, subconsciously having moved from the personal heavy themes of Domestic Surrealism, veering into escapes from the quotidian. 

The pain of making peace. 

Aquarian Empire is about an empire of one. Working triage while the mind wanders in the midst of dreaming the great dreams, the imponderable possibilities.

Writing songs, recording them, putting them out. The production comes in spite of all. And so the songs come, one, sometimes two at a time. Usually in the morning, early, but not always. Some get relegated to scraps of paper that then get lost, misplaced, never to be heard of again. Some get played repeatedly, establish themselves, get written down, recorded, tweaked, put into the streaming slipstream and get played, and maybe travel out into the galaxy endlessly across the universe.

No age lasts forever. 

For those listening to and supporting burmaunderground, I offer my immense gratitude. There’s more to come.

Aquarian Empire

Rubicon

The Width of a Room

Met some aliens	
Riding moonbeams      
They told me things I should not blurt	
“Got the drugs		
Got the chemicals	
Got the wonders of the universe”

I want to go away with you for a ride
I want to go far away and hide

Spent some time	
On our planet	     
Read our papers and they don’t approve	
Pack your bags	
You might like it	
There’s nothing here we can improve

Sell me the arrow	
From your shirt
Send me an arrow 	
Hope it doesn’t hurt

“We’ve got all the best things 		
In the universe
Where you’re going  
There’s no way you can rehearse    
We have no clothes 	
You know it doesn’t hurt”

Got your life		
In a leather satchel	
Saltine crackers and a healing verse
Got your wife		
Or a wet nurse	
You might as well be living in reverse

Take me away		
On your starship forever
Take me away 	
And promise me heaven

“We’ve got all the best things
That you can wanty
We’ve got your dreams of which 	   
We can flaunt
We have no abstractions 	
Such as politics
E yad e yad e yad 
E yah e yah e yah yah yah”


Unexplained Aerial Phenomenon

Lyrics:
You get tired of being down 	
Though they no longer push you around
And you found your place	
Where the saints all hang

Mona Lisa	
Mona Lisa	is down

Tourists gather all day		
Against the walls you hear them say
“We love your eyes		
Your smile is like a prize”

Mona Lisa 	
Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa	is down

You get tired of the sounds 		
And the walls go right around
They’ve arranged your life		
All those lights into the night

Though you never complain	
Never feel warmth again
I believe in our love		
Climbing walls from above

Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa	
Mona Lisa is down


Mona Lisa

This is a song about a friend who experienced a life changing event by going into the hospital.

The Cure

Fairweather

A motivational song for those who have found themselves on the other side of where they expected to be in life. Finding a sign of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, through self-reflection and self surrender.

Standing on a Mountain

The epitome of talk to the hand in a song.

Enough Said

Hide Away

A warm summer breeze in the chill of late spring; a head bobbing rhythm and melody that makes you want to sing along; syncopation and all its anticipatory thrills. I usually characterize my songs by what they remind me of, this one makes me think of Talk Talk, though that's just me :)

A Name You Call

Ordinary Extraordinary

What happens when the basis of your existence becomes mere punctuation? Deconstructing burmaunderground. Pure pop novelty. The song as a rhetorical device, though when isn’t the song a rhetorical device? How many tides does it take to raise your boat high? How many stars will it take to make you see the light? So many questions. 


How Many?

When you thought you knew all the answers, and realized that you don't, but you know enough. The pain of making peace.

Surrender

Bristol

BURMAUNDERGROUND founder, Robert Detman, is an inveterate tunesmith from Flint, Michigan, based in Oakland, California.  

Conceived in Chicago in 1996, the band’s name came unbidden after Detman heard a story about computer programmers in Myanmar. After years of deliberation and practice–and a move to the West Coast–fledgling songs were developed in the kitchen of Detman’s San Francisco Mission District apartment in the early 2000s. The writing flourished with an acoustic guitar, a borrowed electric piano, and effects found and created using reversed analog tape and the echoes across the cityscape on a lonely Saturday night. Those efforts, recorded on a Tascam digital recorder, birthed the spare production of the subdued yet catchy songs on 2003’s POST-WHISTLER RESTORER. Later that year, an offshoot of Detman’s sonic explorations, utilizing elements of ambient and industrial music, culminated in the experimental band CHERNOBYL, and the ethereal album NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND.

After several years’ hiatus, Detman returned to his musical excavations post-pandemic, penning dozens of new compositions and, in 2023, the self-produced SUBAQUEOUS LUNAR AFFIRMATIONS, a song cycle that transmutes late night despair into revelations glimpsed at the dawn of a new day.

2025 promises a banner year of two albums. Detman’s unique songcraft led to the first, the cathartic DOMESTIC SURREALISM, which explores the lyrical power of personal resolve in tales of disconnection and despair married to solid song arrangements and steady tempos, imbued with indelible hooks and judicious production values. The second half of the year will see AQUARIAN EMPIRE, featuring more escapes from the quotidian, the parallel life of the mind. An alternative life?

Inspired by timeless song craft, and with a penchant for discovery and pursuit of the unconventional, BURMAUNDERGROUND's music is a realm of indelible hooks, melodies galore, sincere yet unsentimental and emotional writing, executed with solid, exploratory production.

Detman's writing about music---> https://100songsproject.substack.com/

IPI: 00425248174

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