𝙑𝘼𝙈𝙋𝙄𝙍𝙄𝙎𝙈 𝙄𝙎 𝙈𝙔 𝘿𝙀𝙈𝙄𝙎𝙀 is the story of a vampire who struggles to break through infinity and who finds himself drying out, fading away with each new day that passes. The album is essentially a documentation of final words, first words, regret, abysmal disconsolacy and the absence of hope. Set within mysterious and reverberant soundscapes of pianos, eerie vintage keyboards, mellotrons, various samples and occasional drum programming, it is a deeply psychological exploration of all things dark and uneasy but beautiful. 

All songs were written, recorded, mixed and mastered from May to November 2020 by Victor Primavesi. “The Pink Circle” is a song-adaptation of Holly Raeburn's poem “to love and to honour you,” published in collaboration with Giuseppe Lama as part of their sensational book 'Visions from the Other Side.' Accompanying artwork for 𝙑𝘼𝙈𝙋𝙄𝙍𝙄𝙎𝙈 𝙄𝙎 𝙈𝙔 𝘿𝙀𝙈𝙄𝙎𝙀 was shot on location at Villa Uhlenhorst in Wernigerode, Germany.

Vampirism Is My Demise

Moon Pie

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got

Night Nurse (2009 Remaster)

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Into My Arms

Antony and the Johnsons: 'Cut The World' is a collection of live symphonic performances of songs from the band's 4 full length albums. Recorded in Copenhagen, DK with The Danish National Chamber Orchestra, it features arrangements by Nico Muhly, Rob Moose, Maxim Moston and Antony.

Cut The World

Antony and the Johnsons - "Cut The World"

ANAEMIA

With gloves slipped over my smutted fingers, I try to solve the riddle.
Afraid to touch it, I follow up its contour to the middle.
Empaled by motionlessness and prevalent dismay, 
I feel compelled to turn off the lights and their monstrous shadow play.

Zero and the negative is all I can conceive.
I am a piece of maimed chalk 
turning into a bereaved pile of sorry chalk powder.
A vanishing point of horror

Beware of the vampire lusting under my skin 
For a rush… of something. 
A rush… of anything.
Beware of the vampire who longs for just one thing: 
to be touched by the faintest form of colouring.
Beware of the vampire lusting under my skin.

The brother I felt was my predecessor won’t return my call. 
He’s closed his eyes to our shared trail 	of blood.
Now I’m hitting the wall.
I still have a sister or two out there and maybe another brother 
whose light always watches over me and helps me rediscover:

Why zero and the negative is all I can conceive.
I am a piece of maimed chalk 
turning into a bereaved pile of sorry chalk powder.
A vanishing point of horror

Beware of the vampire lusting under my skin 
For a rush… of something. 
A rush… of anything.
Beware of the vampire who longs for just one thing: 
to be touched by the faintest form of colouring.
Beware of the vampire lusting under my skin.

I can’t bear to cast off my garments to reveal the scars I hide.
Peeled down to my bone marrow, I become the focus of my cynical eye.
A mirror to me is an empty frame displaying a travesty.
No, I don’t want to see what’s become of me.

Beside my bed I keep several oaken bullets.
I know they’d fail when put to the test, 
but they ease the brunt I bear 
of every paper-thin day whose page I turn to no avail.
It’s said life is precious in every way but is it still after a thousand years?

Anaemia dictates the tides and waves of life force in my veins.
Every nightly act of defiance was an uproar choked by silence.
My glass isn’t half-full nor is it half-empty.
It broke to pieces, maybe that will tempt me
to finally admit and realise that vampirism is my demise.

Vampirism Is My Delight

Anaemia

TIRED

I am tired, I am tired 
I’ve made up my tired mind
This is my last chapter to write
I’m tired of me, tired of you
Tired of us and what you put me through

I will rise one last time
I will see the sunshine
Before I grow cold, 
before I grow old
Before my story’s told
This is my last chapter to write
	
What about my mum? 
What about my dad?
What about my friends? 
What about my plans?
What about the things 
that are still ahead?
What about the tears that I have shed?
Don’t think I didn’t ask those questions
I’ve had far too many interventions
I will sleep through the centuries 
That’s what my tired mind needs

I’ve made up my tired mind
This is my last chapter to write
I’ll be with my heroes, 
I won’t be imposed a story arc I didn’t chose
This is my last chance to say goodbye

Tired

AN ORPHIC ORDEAL

I can see and I can hear…
Am I past the inferno or is it near?
What’s that noise?
I can tell there’s a riot in every cell.
For how long will I lie here before I will disappear?
Am I gone or on my way?	
I’m still where I never meant to stay.

Six feet above and overpowered,
I woke up from my final hour.
Dug my hole too deep, I guess I tried.
I am tall but too small inside.
How can I make this right?
How can I stand upright?
With a secret that buries me
deeper than I’d longed to be.

From the familiar I am estranged.
What is real? And what has changed?
A sour taste on my dry lips.
A burning fire in my finger tips.
I can’t breathe, I can’t make a sound.
My knees give in, I kiss the ground.
There is nothing feathery
to how gravity summons me.

Six feet above and overpowered,
I woke up from my final hour.
Dug my hole too deep, I guess I tried.
I am tall but too small inside.
How can I make this right?
How can I stand upright?
With a secret that buries me
deeper than I’d longed to be.

I had licked and sealed every envelope...
Wishes to loved ones full of hope.
A solemn greeting from beyond the grave.
Blood-stained last words I had saved.
I burnt all of them but I could not erase
the act itself, it did not incinerate.
How do you announce, how do you to say:
“Hey, I am almost died, by the way.”

Six feet above and overpowered,
I woke up from my final hour.
Dug my hole too deep, I guess I tried.
I am tall but too small inside.
How can I make this right?
How can I stand upright?
With a secret that buries me
deeper than I’d longed to be.

I never mentioned it to another soul.
Pretended it never happened.
But it had happened and that is why
every day since felt like a lie.
(I thought I could forget)
“Actually, I'm doing quite all right,
well… I mean… you know what it’s like.”
(What am I still doing here?)
I swallowed every subordinate clause.
I had no strength to plead my cause.
(I had made my peace with the past)
	
Six feet above and overpowered,
I woke up from my final hour.
Dug my hole too deep, I guess I tried.
I am tall but too small inside.
How can I make this right?
How can I stand upright?
With a secret that buries me
deeper than I’d longed to be.

An Orphic Ordeal

MY HURT IN YOUR HEART

Yes, I can hear them
Your nervous steps on the upper floor
Yes, I can still hear it
Our fight from the night before
Yes, I can’t unsee them
Your faint tears when I stormed off
Yes, I can still hear them
Your muffled cries amidst choked coughs

It is confirmed, we do incur the same sorrow
How I’d prefer diverged form of our concern,
for our grieve not to concur
In Jungian terms, that’s what occurs
when the tortured become torturers

I bleed into you with certainty
And you will always bleed right into me
The look in your eyes, it’s hard to miss
I hate for you to see me like this
My hurt in your heart
My hurt in your heart

Yes, I can I feel it
The rope that cords the three of us
Yes, I still remember 
All the things we did discuss
Yes, I told you I can’t
bluff a faith I haven’t got
Yes, I know you must impede
my self-destructive desire to bleed

It is confirmed, we do incur the same sorrow
How I’d prefer diverged form of our concern,
for our grieve not to concur
In Jungian terms, that’s what occurs
when the tortured become torturers

I bleed into you with certainty
And you will always bleed right into me
The look in your eyes, it’s hard to miss
I hate for you to see me like this
My hurt in your heart
My hurt in your heart

I know I’m broken but you know I will put myself together
Without your help, I’m afraid,it would take forever
I show my pain but you don’t show yours
although I know what you’ve endured
But how can I live for all of us
when I can’t earn my own trust

I bleed into you with certainty
And you will always bleed right into me
The look in your eyes, it’s hard to miss
I hate for you to see me like this
My hurt in your heart
My hurt in your heart
My hurt in your heart
My hurt in your heart

My Hurt in Your Heart

OF THE SILENT AND UNQUIET

Demons, meet your host for the day:
A haunted man in disarray
Enter a history of intrusion 
The kind of harm that I am used to
A million teeth sunk into my back
A knot of hands tied around my neck
Courting death and obsession
The grip of madness that won’t lessen 

Hear all of my ribs quake
Hear how my spine starts to break	
Hear my skull break in two
My voice starts to shake, 
but what else is new?

Let me go, cut the strings
Pour tar over my hinderings
I know the state of our acquaintance 
I’m out of my last drop of patience
Let me at least see your face
before you proceed to misplace
Every bit of who I am
out of the body that I’m still in	

I strain every nerve and sinew
every time I begin to
hold the globe with a single finger
in denial of dangers that linger
in mistaking dazedness
for a case of weightlessness
Countless times I have fallen
from the ceilings I’ve been crawling

Feel my heart race
See my eyes peeled for a chase 
See my empty ego rise 
to deceitful amounts of highs

Let me go, cut the strings
Pour tar over my hinderings
I know the state of our acquaintance 
I’m out of my last drop of patience
Let me at least see your face
before you proceed to misplace
Every bit of who I am
out of the body that I’m still in	

And there it comes, the rain of ashes
It covers me as it that detaches
Language from feeling from agility
until nothing is how it used to be
It’ll take a few deaths and a summer
before the pieces of my mind recover
My burnt flesh will take long to heal
The sight of ember has lost its appeal

Reversed by silent, unquiet demons:
The certain change of the seasons
My line of sight bent into a maze,
I am stuck in my own ways
Where the fuck have I been?
Who did I invite in?
Was mercury in fucking retrograde?
Is that why my life has been delayed?

Let me go, cut the strings
Pour tar over my hinderings
I know the state of our acquaintance 
I’m out of my last drop of patience
Let me at least see your face
before you proceed to misplace
Every bit of who I am
out of the body that I’m still in	

I don’t go out, but I scream loud
into my closed mouth when in doubt
I hate myself and then I hate you
I guess that is what I have to do
to feel something I can really feel
I have no sense of what is real
I must bleed dry, that’s what I do
Every time I’m halfway through

Of the Silent and Unquiet

LETTERS TO FRANZ

For so long I’ve been writing to you, Franz
Whenever in need of your luminance
You say silence avoids you like the sea avoids a stranded fish
Franz, tell me, is it true? 
Are we alone in this?
Daybreak steals my lucency
I really need your words to hold me

Please give me something, please fulfil
my request because no-one will	
Say the words, ask the question,
release me from my mute suspension
Inside of me, there is a fire
An unquenched flickering desire 
I go up in smoke and no-one sees a thing 
Too many harmonies for one voice to sing

The winds of change whispered to me
that everything comes and goes, they guaranteed  
the gift of hope is on its way
It’ll sprout in time and is here to stay
Franz, am I as deranged as they say?
I’m plotting which conduct to disobey
But what am I without my Joker smile?
I stand no chance in this trial


I waltz into a cheerful room 
to a mellow but unheard funeral march
Over time I learned every single step
and made it to my personal art
You say you could have built the pyramids
with the strength it took you to stay alive
Well, I guess I then could have flown to Mars,
through the perseids to where my Northern star lies 

What more can I say?
It’s a brand new day
What more can I say?
I’ll let it have its way
What more can say?
Same hours on replay
What more can I say?
I’ll let them have their way

What more can I say?
It’s a brand new day
What more can I say?
I’ll let it have its way
What more can say?
Same hours on replay
What more can I say?
Please tell me something to make it through this day

This day
This day
This day

Letters to Franz

Victor Primavesi

Related tracks