Magnetron

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker. All rights reserved.
BFBMusic.com

The wonder in twilight
Atmospheric scattering of sunlight
In the east, along the belt of venus
Earth's shadow is dark tonight

But that's only science
As I turn to find your eyes
Watching and smiling
The very truth…
It's nothing like science
The wonder in twilight
Is you

The backscattered matter
Is beautiful and pink
For a moment then shattered
As the sun slowly sinks

But that's only science
As I turn to find your eyes
Watching and smiling
The very truth…
It's nothing like science
The wonder in twilight
Is you

Oh, the wonder of it all
Is in the stillness of the room
Oh, the wonder of it all
Is your figure in the moon

Oh, the wonder of it all
Is in the stillness of the room
Oh, the wonder of it all
Is your figure in the moon

But that's only science
As I turn to find your eyes
Watching and smiling
The very truth…
It's nothing like science
The wonder in twilight
Is you

You…
You…
You…
The wonder in twilgiht
Is you

The Wonder In Twilight

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker and Joe Maki
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP & Jomah Kai Music, ASCAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker, Joseph Alan Maki. All rights reserved.
 BFBMusic.com

Life can feel like a card game we didn’t choose to play — one where the deck is reshuffled every time we start to understand the rules.

In “Shuffled Men,” I explore that restless feeling of being caught in life’s endless remix — the routines, the role reversals, and the quiet absurdity of pretending we’re in control when the cards have already been dealt. It’s a song about chance and identity, about men who’ve been shuffled through the years until they barely recognize the hand they’re holding.

The word shuffle runs through everything — from playlists to paperwork, from the streets we walk to the thoughts we turn over. It’s rhythm, motion, and futility all at once. The song takes this everyday motion and stretches it into something existential: how we move when we’ve forgotten why we’re moving.

The chorus centers on a dark little truth:

Who ever thinks it’s them / Who are shuffled over when / The cards are cut and shuffled once again.

We all assume we’re the ones holding the aces — until the next cut proves otherwise.

“Shuffled Men” isn’t bitter, though. There’s irony and humor in the way we keep playing along, even when we know the game is rigged. It’s about persistence — a blues for the modern mind, where metaphors tangle like wires and we keep shuffling through anyway.

By the end, the song drifts from the outer shuffle of society into the inner one — relationships, lust, memories, and the jukebox echoes of youth. Those “jukebox hits that shuffle through the air” are as much about nostalgia as they are about the patterns we can’t escape.

In a way, it’s a song about everyone.
We’re all shuffled men and women — rearranged by time, by luck, by love — still standing in the deck, waiting for another hand to be dealt.

Shuffled Men

I shuffle through the noise
And shuffle my unruffled ways
My role's been shuffled thoroughly
But I still shuffle through the days

Shuffling the pieces
Like a playlist put on shuffle
Shuffling my feet
And fear my shuffling is muffled

[chorus]
Shuffled men…
Who ever thinks it's them
Who are shuffled over when
The cards are cut
And shuffled once again
All the lazy one-eyed jacks
And crazy kings
Unaware the pocket Ace
Is sleeping with the queen
And shuffling the men who can't be seen

We shuffle through the wreckage
Of every side shuffle we encounter
Shuffling down the street
With every Tom and Dick redoubter

Piled with paperwork we shuffle
In and out of shuffled lineups
The weary shuffling of time 
Is striking out before the wind-up

[chorus]
Shuffled men…
Who ever thinks it's them
Who are shuffled over when
The cards are cut
And shuffled once again
All the lazy one-eyed jacks
And crazy kings
Unaware the pocket Ace
Is sleeping with the queen
And shuffling the men who can't be seen

I'm sleeping with mixed metaphors
Those shuffled whores
That shuffled men 
Lure in to even scores
And shuffle through the back door
Once more

I shuffle through the joys
Of my disheveled bedroom toys
And shuffle tired ploys
In shuffled scripts of little boys

Shuffling between the worlds
The shuffled luck of teenage girls
But my luck is spent on jukebox hits
That shuffle through the air like this

[chorus]
Shuffled man…
Who never thinks it's him
Who's shuffled over when
The cards are cut
And shuffled once again
All the lazy one-eyed jacks
And crazy kings
Unaware the pocket Ace
Is sleeping with the queen
And shuffling the men who can't be seen

Shuffled Men

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker and Joe Maki
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP & Jomah Kai Music, ASCAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker and Joseph Alan Maki. All rights reserved.
BFBMusic.com

Joe started this one with a piano instrumental he wrote initially some time ago and unearthed and revised on October 25, 2025. He described it like this:

“So I ran across a piano piece that needed fleshing out — I think it might be something. It’s called Hearth, or maybe Fall Ends. I’m deep in the autumn frame of mind, and it suggested a fire slowly dying with the frost creeping in. I had to use a different piano sound in the middle — not sure what I used originally.”

That set the tone. The piece immediately felt like late autumn — quiet, reflective, a little bit haunted by the chill of change.

When I took the inspiration for the lyric, I started from the word Hearth, but my mind wandered to Hearth and Home. The title felt familiar, almost comforting, yet the minor inflection in Joe’s music turned it away from any notion of simple warmth or nostalgia. It became something more complicated — a song about how we try to understand each other but rarely succeed.

The past week’s conversations with people crept into it too. It feels like everyone just wants to be understood and appreciated, but we’re all a little trapped inside our own heads. Words are blunt tools for delicate things. They don’t do us justice. So much gets lost in translation — and yet, we keep trying.

Hearth and Home (Lyrics)
You’re stuck inside your head
Despite the universal truths
People are the same, but not the same
An extension of the fears that held their youth

But who am I but just someone
Another man who’s come undone
Unspun around the common thread
Stuck inside this great big head

After all is said and done
You never really know someone
You never know what you don’t know
You never know their hearth and home
You never know their hearth and home

It’s practically impractical
Before it gets dramatical
I’ll leave before the curtain calls
No, you won’t catch me after all… pretending
Words are dumb and never really know
The ending
Yet it’s always the same
It’s always the very same ending
And it’s such a shame

It’s such a shame!…

You’re stuck inside your head
Despite the universal truths
The brutes in us are winning
While all the ghouls in us come grinning

Through their masks at masquerades
They dance around the false facades
Mispronounced like lemonade
The credits roll, the image fades

After all is said and done
You never really know someone
You never know what you don’t know
You never know their hearth and home
You never know their hearth and home

About the Song
Hearth and Home sits in that fragile emotional space between intimacy and isolation — the quiet ache of realizing that even when we share our thoughts, we remain mysteries to one another. It’s a song about communication and disconnection, about the warmth we reach for and the chill that inevitably returns.

tags: piano, autumn, reflection, misunderstanding, communication, introspection, identity, masquerade, truth, perception, melancholy, relationships, humanity, masks, façade, emotion, nostalgia, isolation, connection, irony, lyrical, poetic

Hearth and Home

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker. All rights reserved.
BFBMusic.com

This song began with a small, almost laughable spark — me playing a tiny melody on a little plastic toy saxophone. Mara, our labradoodle, wasn’t impressed. You can actually hear her reaction in the background — a bit of real life sneaking into the recording. I decided to leave it in. There’s something honest about that; the unplanned details often become the most human ones.

I uploaded that rough take to sunoai, using it as the seed to grow the track. From that tiny melody — and Mara’s disapproval — the song started to form its own atmosphere. It’s funny how these experiments with sound sometimes open unexpected emotional doors.

The title came from a cassette I’m reviewing called *Hallway Five* by Black Pits, released on the ever-curious Public Eyesore label. The word "hallway" lodged itself in my head and started pulling on threads — memory, nostalgia, family, the passage of time. Before long, the song became a walk through the emotional corridors of the past — real, imagined, and everything in between.

These days, I find my thoughts circling those spaces — the ever-circular in-betweens — as I think of them. The moments that aren’t quite now, but not gone either. A hallway, metaphorically and literally, felt like the right place to set this.

“Your Mother’s Hallway” is filled with photographs, echoes, and the sense that life is still unfolding within the walls that hold our stories. It’s about connection and reflection — and how the smallest things, even a toy sax or a barking dog, can become the starting point for something unexpectedly meaningful.

Your Mother's Hallway

Your mother's hallway
Is filled with photographs
Is filled with hugs and laughs
And all kinds of other things
It's filled with lives lived and lost
And lots of you and one of me
And it's all right there in
Your mother's hallway

Your mother's hallway
Is where I learned of Jay
Your one-eyed cat who strayed
Up on your porch one day
And stayed
He's pictured there upon your lap
And you were twelve and looking back
You remember when he died and how you cried
And it's all there in
Your mother's hallway

My mother's photos were tucked away
In her dresser drawer; the bottom shelf
And sometimes I would settle there
Hidden under underwear
School photos and Polaroids
That dad would take on distant Sundays
Out in the yard, out in the sun
Four young kids just being young
Just being young

Your mother's hallway
Is filled with photographs
With room for more it always seems
I find another memory to explore
Hanging there and in between
It's not unlike you or unlike me
To find us lingering there in
Your mother's hallway


Your Mother's Hallway

by Briyan Frederick
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker. All rights reserved.

This began as a snipe from something I made on a Teenage Engineering K.O. II EP-133 or something, sunomangled and a lyrics written Halloween 2025.

The Paper Ghosts That Haunt My Head

Faint words from your graffiti breath
Cold-peeled from my woe-begotten crypt
Stolen and regretted
Confessing the unwedded
The unattended dread

Every inch left footed pidgeons
Full of pride and indecisions
Teetering and dumbfounded
Unwounded and unbecomed

The paper ghosts that haunt my head
They whisper things I've left unsaid
Torn out scraps of dates and times
Half of them I'll never find
The paper ghosts that haunt my head

Broken phrases, half un-uttered
A word in the glue
A fragment of you
Still reaching through
Your crow's point of view

The paper ghosts that haunt my head
They whisper things I've left unsaid
Torn out scraps of dates and times
Half of them I'll never find
The paper ghosts that haunt my head

Your specter won't forget
Unsummoned not quite yet
With rubber hands that will not write
Will not mime whose teeth can't bite
Through pantomime stains
The remains of the days and nights

The whispers of ghouls
And conniving old fools
That fooled me once and thrice fooled you 
Into counting past your terrible two's

Torn diary pages
Maybe the year I let it go
The rest fell off 
But still they almost know

The paper ghosts that haunt my head
They whisper things I've left unsaid
Torn out scraps of  dates and times
Half of them I'll never find
The paper ghosts that haunt my head

The Paper Ghosts That Haunt My Head

words and music by Briyan Frederick and Chris Hoblit

Feathers was originally written and recorded as a songfight.org entry around 2002. The title, Feathers, was announced by the fightmaster and I thought about writing a song about my friend, Joe Maki's, bachelor party weekend in Las Vegas. Chris was a regular in the songfight community and thought he would make a good collaborator on this track so we hooked up and I sent him a basic track and drums, guitar, keyboards, bass and the vocal to the first verse and chorus. He filled out the subsequent verse, bridge and harmonized on the chorus, as well as the solo and spoken word which this new sunoai version copies pretty faithfully.

Feathers

It could be the distance
That covers your face
It could be your insistence
I stay in my place
It could be the hour
Is getting too late
It could be the flower
You tossed on my plate

[chorus]
It could be the feathers
The tickled my heart
If not the feathers
Then where do I start?

It could be the resistance
That is in your eyes
It could be the instance
That our tempers rise
Or it could be the ghosts
In each other's souls
It could be the host
That keeps us whole

[Chorus]
It could be the feathers
The tickled my heart
If not the feathers
Then where do I start?

[bridge]
When you are away
It's not hard to see
Illustrations every day
Of how cold the world can be
There isn't anyone
And you are everyone
And I was never 
meant 
to be
Left alone

It could be the distance
That covers your face
It could be your insistence
 I stay in my place

[chorus]
It could be the feathers
The tickled my heart
If not the feathers
Then where do I start?

[spoken]
(She was staring at me the whole time, the whole time, her eyes were locked on mine)

It could be the feathers
The tickled my heart
If not the feathers
Then where do I start?

Feathers

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker and Joe Maki
 Published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP & Jomah Kai Music, ASCAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker and Joseph Alan Maki. All rights reserved.
BFBMusic.com

This started with an instrumental track by Joe which I fed into sunoai as a cover. Joe called the track, "Portrait," so I took inspiration from the title as I like to do. Joe and I have weekly call where we mostly catch up with the week and during this week's call we talked of the generation coming up into their 30's (in his family in particular and mine to a lesser degree) are choosing to have no children. I guess the times swayed the theme's direction in more ways than one. As I iterated multiple sunoai generations the lyric took shape, bit by bit,  into a protest along No Kings lines and, to be honest, I understood this thing more than I did when I started writing this song. It's not a left versus right thing, despite all the tugging.

All the Portraits

We've stopped having children, no reason to be blessed
Just to  leave them homeless and restless amid all the unrest
We've mortgaged a future left to hope clenched in a fist
Trusting influencers gaming the mess the best

Too many friends on my bleak social feeds
Are dire and distraught and spent and diseased
To have worked a whole lifetime to facebook defeat
Into the bleak ether for algorithms to bleed

[chorus]
And they're sitting for portraits
Surrounded by pitchforks
Not a hair out of place on their empty old heads
Properly proper
Dapperly dapper
All the portraits will burn when the sentence is read

The media circus where the clowns chase the bulls
Who've been dozing in the ballroom now that the china can choose (to run away with our spoons)
To take it or leave it or take it again
It doesn't much matter what becomes of all the old men

[chorus]
Who are sitting for portraits
Surrounded by pitchforks
Not a hair out of place on their empty old heads
Properly proper
Dapperly dapper
All the portraits will burn when the sentence is read

Their cruelty's folly
Must now somehow be
Exposed at every rally
And then effigy'd

To take it or leave it or take it again
It doesn't much matter what becomes of all the old men
It's now or it's never to upheave and upend
This rickety contraption that holds us to them

[chorus]
While they're sitting for portraits
Surrounded by pitchforks
Not a hair out of place on their empty old heads
Properly proper
Dapperly dapper
All the portraits will burn when the sentence is read is read)

All the Portraits

by Briyan Frederick
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker. All rights reserved.

Written Monday evening 3 Nov 2025. This one started on acoustic guitar with me singing a guide melody on top; taking that into sunoai and scratching out the lyric bit by bit.

I Wish I Had Known

I made a big mistake when I succumbed to fate
When I forsook my lucky break 'cos I could never wait
I could never quite relate 'til it was way too late
Way too late to take the prize home…

After all you were the first to let me in
The first to take me in instead of on the chin
The first to be there when I wasn't winning
Way too late to take the prize home…

[chorus]
I wish I had known
(Oh-woah-oh I wish I had known)
That we could have gone on
And that the end was nowhere near being done
Oh, I wish I had known
( I only wish I had known)
 I wish I had known

And something tells me it won't come around again
It's obvious I was the one who was the fool back then
Telling everyone I was a winner when
I was way too late to take the prize home…

[chorus]
I wish I had known
(Oh-woah-oh I wish I had known)
That we could have gone on
And that the end was nowhere near being done
Oh, I wish I had known
( I only wish I had known)
 I wish I had known

I'll never live it down
No, no, no I'll never live it down
I'll never live it down (no, no, no)
I'll never live it down…
How could I ever forever live it down
Whenever your memory comes around
Like it's forever coming around right about now?
Somehow…

I made a big mistake when I succumbed to fate
When I forsook my lucky break 'cos I could never wait
I even remember the date I said I'd be delayed
Way too late to take the prize home…

[chorus]
I wish I had known
(Oh-woah-oh I wish I had known)
That we could have gone on
And that the end was nowhere near being done
Oh, I wish I had known
( I only wish I had known)
 I wish I had known

I only wish I had known…

I Wish I Had Known

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker. All rights reserved.
BFBMusic.com

This one started as a playful experiment that turned into something more tender and true. The seed was an old track I recorded in 2010 when I was commuting to work and adding instrument parts into songs on my phone. Many of those sketches used iOS instruments mixed with my traditional setup. I always liked the guitar solo in that version and the short counterpoint melody threading through it — and that comes through again in the new sunoai version.

The lyric began where humor and vulnerability overlap — that place where we compare ourselves to mismatched things because love often does feel mismatched.

> *I’m like a fish out of its water*
> *You’re a whale without a fin (beluga)*
> *I know it’s crazy to begin…*

The images are intentionally odd and slightly lopsided — a flip-flop and a boot, a desperado and a guy who looks miserable in a scuba suit. They’re metaphors for trying, for reaching across difference, for loving each other in ways that don’t always look symmetrical.

The line “You’re swearing like a nurse” came from noticing how people in caring professions (nurses among them) swear in a very specific, exhausted-but-hilarious way. It’s not angry swearing — it’s survival swearing. It felt honest.

The chorus is the anchor, and it’s simple on purpose:

> *In the end we all need love (you know it’s true)*

Because we do.

The world is loud and divisive and confusing and isolating. We hold mismatched histories, mismatched temperaments, mismatched hopes. We get things wrong. We say the wrong thing. Sometimes we show up dressed like a scuba diver to a rodeo. And yet —
we still want to belong.

When arranging the sunoai track, I started leaning into parenthetical vocal phrases — tiny echoes or side-comment thoughts that run underneath the main lyric. It felt like a conversation with myself, or the way you say something out loud while thinking something slightly different inside.

The song isn’t really about being mismatched — it’s about how being mismatched doesn’t disqualify us from loving or being loved.

Which is kind of the whole point.

**Recording Notes**

* Original sketch written + recorded 2010
* Reworked and expanded in sunoai (2025)
* Vocals arranged with parenthetical counterlines
* Mixed + finalized in my studio

We All Need Love

I'm like a fish out of its water
You're a whale without a fin (beluga)
I know it's crazy to begin

You're a desperado riding
I look miserable in a suit (scuba)
I'm a flip-flop, you're a boot

[Chorus]
In the end we all need love (you know it's true)
In the end we all need love (you know it's true)
In the end we all need love, oh…
In the end we all need love

I'm simply stating fiction
You're swearing like a nurse (honk)
How could we ever be together?

You're undeniable, I'm weathered
I'm up for staying in (side out)
You're a pulley, I'm a lever

[Chorus]
In the end we all need love (you know it's true)
In the end we all need love (you know it's true)
In the end we all need love, oh…
In the end we all need love

My corner's all need dusting
You're edgy I'm a moose (Rocky & Bullwinkle)
You're stupid like a fox

I'm an old and knotted puppet
You're a slinky in the rain (it's just a sprinkle)
I'm a jack without a box

[Chorus]

[bridge]
Holding hands like old folks do
The world needs love to get us through
The needle's eye fits me and you
If we take the road that's straight and true…

[Chorus]

In the end we all need love (you know it's true)
In the end we all need love (you know it's true)
In the end we all need love, oh…
In the end we all need love…





We All Need Love

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker. All rights reserved.
BFBMusic.com

The Full Effect was original written and recorded and recorded around 2003 as a songfight.org entry. The original track incorporated a loop from Chris Phinney of Mental Anguish which appeared in the break between the second chorus and the instrumental break. The song has been recreated in sunoai beginning in 2024.

The Full Effect

You feel the days rushing by
You feel the tears that you cry

You feel the tension take control
You feel something that you don't know

[Chorus]
But you won't feel the full effect
Until you face your big regrets
Smoke your last cigarette
Take a bullet to the head

You feel a fever burning hot
You feel everything in you rot

[Chorus]

You feel it mounting, could it be
You feel it buckle at your knees

[Chorus]


Magnetron

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