Microscope

Creeper Waltz (For Three Hands)

The Dancing Plague

Devils Tooth (The Golden Century)

Streaks Of Light

Long Way Down

Waterline

Fearless

Hidden Fires

In the moment you were born
All the gods they were appeased
In the age of hidden fires
In the age of hidden fires

And they kept you fed and warm
And they tended to your needs
In the age of hidden fires
In the age of hidden fires

And they set aside their scorn
And they swallowed down their grief
In the age of hidden fires
In the age of hidden fires

Until a field of flames took form
That the gods did not foresee
In the age of hidden fires
In the age of hidden fires

Hidden in pockets and handbags and wallets
Inside the walls and under the bonnets
In empty fields and concert halls
In noodle bowls and conference calls

Beneath all the pavements, behind all the screens
In the air conditioning and the movie streams
In traintracks and backstreets and stovetops and lampshades
through worksites and bedrooms and headphones and highways

Hidden fires, hidden fires

In bank fees and factories and in keynote speeches
In memories and disease and waitrooms and treatments
In bodyheat, and heartbeats and brain cells
Through muscles and movements, excretions and entrails

In rivers and beaches, museums and stadiums
Through airports and taxis and hotels and changerooms
Under us and over us, between us and beside
There’s fires in the wires and fires in the skies

Hidden fires, hidden fires

We gather and flow in great rivers of bodies
In patterns and spreadsheets and big-data studies
We spark joints and make points and revise our strategies
We're constantly mindlessly transferring energies from

Hidden fires, hidden fires

Soundfossil - Hidden Fires (home demo)

History is full of plagues, they come and go in waves and waves
But the strangest one there's ever been was Strasbourg in 1518

A woman there began to dance, a small crowd fell into her trance
They couldn't stop, they tried and tried, the rhythm would just not subside
In a feverish malaise, those people danced for days and days

Soon hundreds moved in unison, entranced, immune to all reason
Through weeks and months, through night and day, their flesh began to waste away 
Strangers prayed and loved ones wailed, doctors tried to help and failed
The numbers grew, the virus spread, the dance soon claimed its first few dead

The people brought musicians in, to draw the dance out from within
The city built a wooden stage, and night and day the music played
But in trying to lift the curse, they spread it round, they made it worse 
Those infectious melodies increased the spread of the disease

Toxic ergot fungal spores, growing through the rye grain stores
Are a documented cause of hallucinations and tremors 
Victims would be seized by mania, exhibiting bizarre behavior
Flailing limbs and muscle spasms, contagious enthusiasm
But that does not explain it all

Now we can read page after page on theories of cultural contagion
Was it some big psychogenic behavioral epidemic
Or was it a poison spider bite, or some secret pagan rite,
Or a curse sent down to claim the young from St. Vitus or St. John
Well, we may never know for sure

They never found a cause or cure, so there's no way we can be sure
That one day in a city street, our heaving pulsing limbs won't meet
With sweaty brows and heavy breath, as we all dance ourselves to death.



Words and music by Nick Wilson 2020. Additional vocals by Erin Hall & Lauren Garcia. Cello & clarinet by Lauren, Picture is a detail of "The Wedding Dance by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

soundfossil

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