Lyrics: 

Look at the sky now
The moon or the sun
You get one more glance, dear
Before the bombs come
Light up my eyes now
The last of the fire we can use
I’d love to see me in your eyes one more time don’t refuse

Well, you’ve always been pretty
But soon it won’t matter
As the skyscrapers shatter
And everything we’ve ever known is drawn up in a cloud

Lie down beside me
What else can we do
Coughing, immobile
We’ll both bleed out soon
Let’s try to remember
When it all began
When we walked in the sunshine no care in the world holding hands

It all seems too clear now
You’ve always been right
We should have stayed up
Plotting how we could take out those silos or get off the earth on a slingshot flight

Having A Blast (demo version)

Lyrics:

Where does this highway go to?
Who are these people working beside it?
Why do the summer daffodils stand out
against the thistle?
Why did I stop along the way?

The light of the sun
Wells up in everything
And everyone

I wandered into town along that strip of black oil
The bed of all of it
And through the pickup rear window
I saw your brown eyes
Flicker by, a single frame

The look you gave
Was it a laugh or a smile?
Was it a smile?

I wandered into town but then I didn’t really see it
There are no pictures in this place

I will be your camera
The earth, it burns us in this place
Memories don’t make you mine

Reckoning (demo version)

Lyrics:

internet and alternate spawn instances of you and me and any  space between
message “don’t do anything, you’ll come to nothing but herds of uncanny”, like you dream
It happened to the researcher, the maker, or the dreamer that you were
so became a mimic, a repeater,  and a sequencer
soldering circuits
wording the surface

Throwin rocks into a lake; Summer’s off the hook again they said
Mean streets just don’t mean a thing; You’re mean as mean can be, just like you dreamt
message “don’t do anything, they’ll strip you like a parked car”, as you are
It happened to the wanderer, the poet writing words along with heartbeats, as you were
fax into the future, your facsimile lives on and on and on
soldering spirits
into the physics 

No one ever asked you here
No one ever stays here
Forever

We are the damned the damned the damned

The Damned (demo version)

Lyrics:

The words you spoke into the shore 
The woods and the stars and the waves 
In the mirror, I hear you're low 
So am I 
So are we 
It's a spooky California night 
I hope it's gonna be alright 
I hope it's gonna be down low 
‘Cause I'm ashamed 
So are you 

What's on that billboard? 
Do they see us? Young, flushed souls? 
Did they see us? 
Bathing in the moonlight of Paros? 
They see us now 
What would I give to be just 
Stranded in the wild

Symbols drift over the sea
Pale illusions in our eyes
Look around, the hill’s on fire
How can we
Smile or sleep?
It’s a spooky California night
I hope we’re gonna be alright 
I hope it’s just our own shadow
That we see
A show about you

What’s on that billboard?
See the time is running out
Can we free us
From our haunted condition?
We could get out
What I would give to be just 
Rolling on the Western wind.

Spooky California Night (demo version)

Lyrics:

Well the 15th of October
Was a moment, was a vortex
Was a subtle crushing nightmare
Over ancient earthen highways
Something in the arctic air was wrong
With that morning
Something’s wrong with me
That’s why you shoved me to the curb
A crumbling fool
You don’t realize that it can end tomorrow.

The 15th Of October (demo version)

Lyrics:

Lights go out at midnight
Are all your secrets sown?
The wind burns verse on your forehead:
“It’s a vast, unspeakable show”

You shouldn’t have said you were tired
She wouldn’t have noticed at all
You couldn’t have known that she’d leave
Jump on a train to Montreal

Window is an oven, and sound
The glow of the disco below
Paintings of the saints all around
As you glanced around the shambolic show

Wrote your verses of disaster
No one understood what they meant
Voices of the dead in the river
Cry with the stroke of your pen

You shouldn’t have answered that phone call
You couldn’t see the terror unfold
You never should have looked in a camera
You know it devours your soul

She’s leaving a trail of white feathers
Trying to find a new lover or friend
Looks up from under her black veil
& says “I’ll curse you if I see you again”

Morning walk with the undead
The Bowery, the bridge to the Bronx
Ambling up the sharded gridlines
More and more stuck in the swamp

You shouldn’t ask so many questions
They’ll never say what you wanna hear
Old photographs overwritten
The city’s rewritten with fear

66th & 6th (demo version)

Lyrics:

We can get the process right
Stand together in this fight
We can end the turbulence
Atop a magnetic fence
We can get to camp tonight
Continental affluence 
Vanished in the west twilight
Dancing in electric trance

Samples Used:

"Train passing by in the Wirikuta Desert (Mexico, SLP)", felix.blume. 
September 30th, 2012 (CC-0) https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/166086/

"06-2011 Passenger Train Pass #1.wav", lonemonk. June 14th, 2011 (CC-3) https://freesound.org/people/lonemonk/sounds/122064/ 

"Skytrain Acceleration FS.wav", Sailor55. January 7th, 2010 (CC-4) https://freesound.org/people/Sailor55/sounds/87317/

Railforest (demo version)

Hey!
What's the score?
What do you read?
What has been said.
Hurtling millions of words.
Magic.
Singing wires.

Samples: “Telegram for America” [1956 Transfilm/Western Union Telegraph Co.] Retrieved from: archive.org/details/Telegram1956

TEL REC MOD 237

Lyrics:

The redding sun has led me on a trail of tall disaster
The shadow of my life before shrinks as the years move faster, 
so gather people and I’ll tell you all what came to pass
hold all your lovers close and pour another in your glass

I drank my way away from her
I gambled all our savings
The deck was stacked. The one eyed jack was just a grifter winking.
I walked outside, I saw a fight
across the parking lot
a masked man pulled a knife out 
and cut out a poor girl’s heart

The purple night, its dim moonlight
now became suffocatin
the man pulled off his mask
and ritually started eatin
my thumb went lookin for a button 
‘cos nothing here was right
that’s when he flashed his badge and said
“d’you wanna die tonight?”

I tell you all straight from my soul
I believe in the arc of justice
I don’t fear cops their frisks and stops
their hawkish stares and blusters
but when that thing stared back at me
maw drenched in all that blood
I froze right there, his lizard stare
was ancient as the wood

I probably fainted, woke up later
someone brought me coffee
a morning chinook from the west
washed away that night scene
I found I could not speak a word
somehow my brain got stuck
thats when I started wandering
no skills, no friends, no luck

I must’ve wandered several months
among the canyons shadows
fitfully hallucinatin up creeks, and with no paddles
a vision of a black serpent rose up from all this dreaming
said “confess, a voicemail on her iPhone to stop your tears from streaming”

so from a phone booth service station
I called like I was told
my rotten apple passed to her
the curse it did unfold
now the redding sun
has abandoned
my journey and my nation
The cops who kill us left and right
are in every shadow waitin

I ride the rails
they’re on my trail
and clever traps they’re baiting
its cold as hell 
this winter spell
is murdering us sapiens

now folks draw near
and listen here
our troubles are not over
as I sing to you in this honky tonk
keep one eye o’er your shoulder
every town and every crowd
I look out in the haze
knowing that this last verse 
could be the last thing I say

Mass Extinction

Lyrics:

You say you want this revolution
I can hear one in the bonfire
But the beach it takes us prisoner
The rich get richer
It’s in the lore

You’ve gone too far again
You should’ve learned to swim
Looking out to the west
The waves consume the coast
The silt fills in the rest
The Delta of the past
Swimming with all our ghosts
To never return to shore

So many, thousands will fall 
Singed aluminum capsule 
You’re too much i’ the sun
Plunging to an earthlike planet. 
Though we’re in a real freefall. 
Re-entry is so hot
The rich get more and more
But the rich kid lives next door. 
He owns the store. 

In interview, I said 
I cannot see their faces
The faces of customers 
Blend into the background
If I can predict the future
Only the rich get richer 
Bathed in the golden hours
Forever. That’s the score.

Scorecard

Lyrics:

Who is that figure
Standing there in the amber
In the magic hour
At the edge of the wood
Near the cut of the frame
Did they see the disturbance
In the other exposure
The one you dare not put to the page?

Only a shadow
Tragic dancer
A force of nature
Call your employer
Alternate answer
Warn the others.

Why is this shadow here
In every picture
Did we do something
To wrong this person?

Only a breath away
Falling chances
It’s all you are
Save all your breath now
You’ll need it soon to
To warn the others.

Warn The Others

Lyrics:

There are no more words
This house is a curse
The cause of mass evictions
Nowhere is home
Nothin is owned
It’s all been a printed fiction

We take to the hills
We take to the road
No titles and no typos
Everything and everyone
Trapped in the mind, my my my mind

But I can’t tell
The toll of the bell
From the violins of the devil
He’s out on the road, too
Just waiting to deal you
His god damned 3-for-1 special

We roam on foot
Through old motels
Cybersquats and old chatrooms
So exposed
Anything, and anyone
Spare me some time, time time time time

Now I’m just a ghost
In an unholy host
The moon and the asteroids falling
There are no more words
& this body’s a curse
A speaking tongues conversation.

No More Words

Samples from:

“Captured_12142006_20560056K” [2006 Berkeley Police Department Dispatch Public Scanner]
Published 2006-12-14 21:18:32 Retrieved from: archive.org/details/BerkeleyPoliceDepartmentScanner/

“Meow”, by Min Min Da Cat [October 19, 2022, home recording by the author, used by permission]

And The Light Went On

Sample:

“Scratch Sample” [templeofhades]. Published April 18th, 2012, CC0 1.0 (Public Domain)
https://freesound.org/people/templeofhades/sounds/151822/

The Last

Telegraph Cult blends science fiction, synthpop, and Americana, with lyrical narratives about love, alienation, and loss amid societal collapse.

SoundCloud is where our previews, demos, and b-sides live, temporarily. Go to our Bandcamp page for official releases.

Telegraph Cult

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