Jude Traxler plays guitar, keys, computers, and sings
Al Cerulo plays uke, melodica, percussion, and electronics
Greg Chudzik plays basses, synths, and software robots

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
All tracks recorded and produced at Traxler Studios, NYC (2019/2020)
Mastered by Andrew McKenna Lee @ Still Sound Music, East Chatham, NY
echoartifact.com  |  traxlerstudios.com  |  stillsoundmusic.com

Buy on Bandcamp.com

Left To Lose

I don’t feel like sleeping anymore
Maybe now and then
Even being numb can be a chore
When you’re stepped on again

I don’t get to see you anymore
I just live to move myself around around again
How I’d like to meet you furthermore
How cordial we’d pretend

Why I fail to see the point of waking up to you
While I find myself in someone else’s shoes

Bring me back a season from before
A cold and subtle wind
Leaving all our reasons at the door
We’re keeping score but no one playing ever wins

Why I fail to see the point of waking up to you
While I find myself in someone else’s shoes

I am not myself
Who could I be
If not someone else

I don’t feel like sinking anymore
February silences are setting in
Pick apart my ego ’til it’s sore
But then again, where are all my fucking friends?

Why I fail to see the point of waking up to you
While I find myself in someone else’s shoes
(waiting here for you)

I won't find my way out
I don't mind these breakdowns
(I think about the silence of danger)
I won't let you in now
I'll find my own way down
(I think I am becoming a stranger)

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

I think I am becoming a stranger

Blue bird, blue bird are you tired?
Bloodied, tin foil and are you fired?
Weary, I don't think I've tried
Long enough now to be alright
I don’t think we should sleep tonight

Red bird, red bird do you feel?
Lessen my grip is this not real?
Quiet reset to feel alright
I don’t think we can win this fight
All depends where she sleeps tonight

Black bird, black bird do you know
How afraid is your heart to show?
Seal it up stitched away from light
Long enough not to feel inside
I don’t think this will be alright

Blue bird, blue bird won’t you try?
She bleeds out while the fire dies
Giving up isn’t like letting go
Breaking down over radio
Where from here baby? I don’t know

Blue bird, blue bird are you tired?
Bloodied, tin foil and are you fired?
Weary I don't think I've tried
Overwhelming adrift reminds:
Never don’t let your heart decide

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

Bluebird

I’m not me
I know it
Let’s not see
Where this is going

You’ve caught me
And it’s showing
Brace yourself
Hell is snowing—

She can’t even keep up on the sideline
A project for the center of my side-mind
We sink another body in the timeline
I know you don’t mean too much and-

(I am not myself anymore)

I’m not me  (Find me a new way out)
I’ve known it
Let’s not see  (Blinding this newest doubt)
Where this is going

You’ve lost me  (Find me a new way out)
Never showing
Brace yourself  (Blinding this newest doubt)
Hell is snowing—

Find me a new way out

featuring Katie Zarazua-Dover, vocals
echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

Untitled Strings

I don’t
I don’t think you mean it
Here now another disagreement
Play our cards

It means more to me when you’re gone
What at this point could go wrong?
Where the heart flows silt will follow
A pill too big for us to swallow

What could I do to make this worse?
Love, being a chemical randomly dispersed,
Is never that we’ve found our place
But merely a familiar face;
A bluebird transfixed in space

Come down
Come down
(I won’t)
Come down
(I don’t)
Play our hearts

(I don’t think you mean it.)
Play our cards

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

Prelude

“Do you want to be a memory?”, she sang to me
If you ever feel inside, are you truly free?
Never will the tears flow
Never will she let go
Forever holding on to thee. I said,
“All my memories are broken, baby,
and I’m ashamed, you see.”

“Do you ever feel alive? Do you strain to breathe?”
Another line of questioning that should pertain to me
Better to be let go
Rather than an echo
Waiting just to see if she can see
“Do you ever feel alive?” I said,
“Only when the pain recedes.”

“Do you want to be a memory?”, she sang to me
Hope is just a metaphor
For when the pain recedes

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

Ebb & Low

Not that long ago
We stood face to face
Indecision shows
The ways that we have changed

Born again to show
That we’ve evolved away
Bleeding head to toe
But we keep secrets safe

One last round to go
And then we’re far away
No one has to know
‘Cuz we keep secrets safe

Like nothing matters

By now I know, knocked down, I’m not getting up
Ready to bleed for this but I’m too deep cut
The longer I’m down the more I sink to oblivion
You have no idea what this will become

No one left to know
No one left to say
Dig deep down below
To keep this secret safe

Buried here alone
With all of our mistakes
Never really known
That we were making graves

All that’s left to show
Is violently erased
Fear of letting go
Will keep me in this place
...keep me in my place

(I’m watching all my dreams turn circles)
(Waiting for a great new purpose)

Like something matters

By now I know, knocked down, I’m not getting up
Ready to bleed through this but I’m too deep cut
The longer I’m down the more I sink to oblivion
You have no idea what this has become

Finally alone
Desperate and decayed
Breaking sticks and bones
To keep this story straight

(Weigh me down
I know why
You won’t ask me now
I know why
You can’t weigh me down
Ask me why)

By now I’m done, knocked out, I’m never getting up
Already bleeding out and I’ve had enough
The longer I’m down the more I sink to oblivion
You have no idea but this has begun

Finding out that hope
Is frequently delayed
Never letting go
‘Cuz we keep secrets safe

What’s your price for keeping secrets?

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

Ask Me

When we were waking from our dreams
The world had changed or though it seems
Whenever asked we stayed the story true
Never not a world to see, we set our course: return to dreams
And bare the bear that bare repeating soon

I’m leaving out a lot of things
We never should’ve stayed asleep
When listening is key to keeping cool
All you want is interesting
When “interesting” is blisteringly
Ever better than forgotten fools

Let me start again to say -
Aware there should be better ways
Of coping with reality anew -
“Finding new epiphanies of recent found discrepancies
Will only get you further from the truth.”

I’m leaving out a lot of things
We never should’ve stayed asleep
When misery is key to keeping cruel
And all you want is interesting
But “interesting” is blisteringly
Ever better than forgotten fools

Why, I think I’ll try to tell you why I never tried
Why the body left the soul for somewhere else to die
Something felt real
Something’s wrong here

To finish up convincingly
I feel I mustn’t say
A litany of reasons why I’m lost along the way
A fault, a fear, at least ten beers have kept my soul a-sway for years
But at least I’ve kept all her regrets at bay

I’m leaving out a lot of things
We never should’ve strayed from sheep
When victory is key to keeping true
But what you want is interesting
When “interesting” is blisteringly
Ever better than forgotten fools
We’re never better than forgotten fools
Let’s clean this up before the blood begins to pool

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019/2020)

Forgotten Fools

I don’t know just what you need to see
But I know that I can
Never be the one to show you
I don’t know you
This is coming
Listen, we are running out of time

I don’t know just what you need to be
To consume my own inevitable
Reaching through you
I once knew you
This is coming
Crystal, hearts are breaking, yours and mine

But I don’t mind. No, I won’t mind.

Waking up to something never seems
Like a separation from our dreams when
We’re not sober
We’re not over
Feeling that electric
Doesn’t come without its price

Now it seems that we have let this bleed
To point that we can not recede
If we don’t treat this
We won’t beat this
This is coming
Listen we are running out of time

I don’t mind
(I don’t see what this might mean to you now)
No, I won’t mind
(I believe you won’t see me come around)

Now I know what this is meant to say
Broken hearts are mending day-to-day
But do I feel this way?

I won’t mind

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

Mind Over Matters

I don’t have friends I have habits
It’s really not hard to pretend
When all of my friends are erratic
Imagine how I look to them
I don’t think my dreams are elaborate
But I don’t think that they’d understand
I don’t want to seem melodramatic
Here is our list of demands:

We want everything necessarily for a change
As integrity mounts we’ve aversion to fame
I don’t want to elope but I can’t see my name
Be it crayon or LED lights all the same

I don’t have friends I have habits
It’s really quite easy to see
If all of my friends automatic
Then what does that say about me?
Is it really tough?
Have you had enough?
If you think it’s bad now, the ending is rough

(Listen, call me back.
I don’t know.
It doesn’t matter.
I never called you that.
If you go
Then nothing matters.
Let’s restart.
Let’s react.
Call me back.)

featuring Katie Zarazua-Dover, vocals
echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

I Don't Have Friends I Have Habits

Do you have a light?
I’ll give you anything but a piece of my mind when I 
Try not to fight
Something in the back of me withers and dies

We weren’t all born in Hollywood

He drives through the night
As she looks out the window he recedes to a time when
Things are alright
While holding out for compromise the meter expires

Isn’t this weather vindictively cool?

Then she said...

All the king’s horses and all the kings men
Couldn’t put us back together again

She walks away
Not knowing what it is she thinks he wants her to say
She might not today
When starting conversations tends to just be a waste of time

You would’ve known me in high school

Then he said...

All the king’s horses and all the kings men
Couldn’t put us back together again

What if all the people we’ve become are unhappy?
Wouldn’t it be better in the long run (better) if we started detaching?
Nothing says I love you like “the end”

Do you have a light?
I’ll give you anything to look me in the eyes
Let’s stay in and fight
I don’t want to be around me but I need you to try

Nobody told me
Everyone ignored me
Fairytale or fable, it’s cool

All the king’s horses and all the kings men
Everyone’s trying but where to begin?
When all of us are dying I needed a friend
All the king’s horses and all the kings men
Couldn’t put us back together again

echoartifact.com/lefttolose
Recorded at Traxler Studios (2019)

Talking Points

Echo Artifact is Al Cerulo and Jude Traxler; multi-instrumentalists live-looping original songs within a narrative structure.