Songs We Like - October 2019

Numerical November is my third solo Extended Play (EP). The EP features a compilation of songs that was created spontaneously throughout the month of November, 2024. The genesis of this project was simply me writing new songs from a blank slate, naming each song-in-progress after a number, beginning with the number 1. 

After a few days, I realized that I was 8 songs in and decided to listen and reflect on each idea I started but had not yet finished. I found that most of the ideas were really good. From there, I completed the songs and decided to create an EP out of a some of them. 

In my personal and spiritual life, November of 2024 was a time of learning and awakening to angel numbers and numerology. I found myself noticing and encountering a variety of angel numbers which led me to explore more about numerology and ultimately, how mathematics, music and the universe are connected . 

Many of the songs that are feature on this project started as ideas that came to me spontaneously between the hours of 12am-3am. Most times, I was awakened out of my sleep at a time that reflected an angel number (3:33am, for example). This happened repeatedly until it didn't. At that point, I knew that I was done recording and could focus on editing, mixing, and finalizing the project in all the other necessary ways. 

I hope the music and the context of this project inspires you, positively evokes your curiosity about numerology and the relationship between math, music, and the universe. Ultimately, I hope it touches your heart. 

Enjoy :) 

Ghost in the Wallpaper
This song paints a haunting portrait of emotional absence and surreal memory. Set in a decaying domestic space, the narrator is surrounded by eerie remnants of a lost love—shoes in strange places, lipstick stains, and voices in machines. The lyrics blend poetic melancholy with cryptic imagery, evoking a sense of psychological unraveling. The chorus likens love to a “phantom limb,” something once vital now painfully missing. With its quiet-loud-quiet structure and fragmented storytelling, the song captures the tension between longing and madness, memory and reality. It’s a sonic ghost story wrapped in distorted guitars and whispered regrets.

---

Lyrics 

[Intro – Ambient build]  
[Soft piano echoes, distant vinyl crackle, heartbeat-like kick]

[Verse 1 – intimate, breathy vocals]  
She left her shoes in the microwave,  
Her laugh still lives in the static haze.  
The ceiling drips with yesterday,  
I sleep beneath her echo’s weight.

[Pre-Chorus – rising tension]  
I trace her name in the frost on glass,  
Time rewinds but never lasts...

[Chorus – cinematic burst]  
Love is a phantom limb—  
Twitching in the wind.  
I scream into the floor,  
But love don’t live here anymore.

[Instrumental 1 – orchestral swell + distorted guitar]  
[Strings rise, guitar bends like memory warping]

[Verse 2 – falsetto + layered harmonies]  
The fridge hums like a lullaby,  
I talk to shadows passing by.  
Her lipstick stains the bathroom sink,  
I drink her name, I drink, I sink.

[Bridge – glitchy, fragmented]  
She’s a flicker in the TV snow,  
A whisper in the undertow.  
I built a shrine from broken phones,  
But all I hear are dial tones.

[Instrumental 2 – glitch-pop interlude]  
[Stuttered beats, reversed pads, ghostly vocal chops]

[Verse 3 – spoken word + ambient pads]  
Her voice spins in the washing machine,  
Curtains twitch when I say her name.  
This house plays a haunted game,  
And I’m the only one left to lose.

[Verse 4 – full band, emotional peak]  
She carved goodbye in a butter knife,  
Left fingerprints on my second life.  
I chase her shadow through the stereo,  
But all I get is vertigo.

[Chorus – final, cinematic crescendo]  
Love is a phantom limb—  
Twitching in the wind.  
I scream into the floor,  
But love don’t live here anymore.

[Outro – ambient fade]  
No more, no more, no more...  
Love don’t live here...  
Love don’t live here...  
Anymore...

[Hidden Track – lo-fi tape loop]  
[Whispers of the chorus, detuned piano, fading heartbeat]
`

---

© Lyrics and concept by Martin Oliver Beinersdorf / MOBest  
All rights reserved. Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is prohibited.


Ghost in the Wallpaper

Total Life Forever

Black Gold

Spectre

Joanna

One thing you won’t be able to avoid on Bambara’s Stray is death. It’s everywhere and inescapable, abstract and personified  – perhaps the key to the whole record. Death, however, won’t be the first thing that strikes you about the group’s fourth – and greatest – album to date. That instead will be its pulverising soundscape; by turns, vast, atmospheric, cool, broiling and at times – on stand out tracks like “Sing Me To The Street” and “Serafina” – simply overwhelming
 
Bambara – twin brothers Reid and Blaze Bateh, singer/guitarist and drummer respectively, and bassist William Brookshire – have been evolving their midnight-black noise into something more subtle and expansive ever since the release of their 2013 debut Dreamviolence. That process greatly accelerated on 2018’s Shadow On Everything, their first on New York’s Wharf Cat Records and  a huge stride forward for the band both lyrically and sonically. 
 
The album was rapturously received by the press, listeners and their peers. NPR called it a “mesmerising...western, gothic opus,” Bandcamp called the "horror-house rampage" "one of the year's most gripping listens," and Alexis Marshall of Daughters named it his “favorite record of 2018.”  Shadow also garnered much acclaim on the other side of the Atlantic. Influential British 6Music DJ Steve Lamacq, dubbed them the best band of 2019’s SXSW, and Joe Talbot of the UK band IDLES said, "The best thing I heard last year was easily Bambara and their album Shadow On Everything."  The question was, though, how to follow it?
 
To start, the band did what they always do: they locked themselves in their windowless Brooklyn basement to write. Decisions were made early on to try and experiment with new instrumentation and song structures, even if the resulting compositions would force the band to adapt their storied live set, known for its tenacity and technical prowess. Throughout the songwriting process, the band pulled from their deep well of creative references, drawing on the likes of Leonard Cohen, Ennio Morricone, Sade, classic French noir L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafraud, as well as Southern Gothic stalwarts Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews.
 
Once the building blocks were set in place, they met with producer Drew Vandenberg, who mixed Shadow On Everything, in Athens, GA to record the foundation of Stray. After recruiting friends Adam Markiewicz (The Dreebs) on violin, Sean Smith (Klavenauts) on trumpet and a crucial blend of backing vocals by Drew Citron (Public Practice) and Anina Ivry-Block (Palberta), Bambara convened in a remote cabin in rural Georgia, where Reid laid down his vocals.
 
The finished product represents both the band's most experimental and accessible work to date. The addition of Citron and Ivory-Block’s vocals create a hauntingly beautiful contrast to Bateh’s commanding  baritone on tracks like “Sing Me to the Street”, “Death Croons” and “Stay Cruel," while the Dick Dale inspired guitar riffs on “Serafina” and "Heat Lightning" and the call-and-response choruses throughout the album showcase Bambara’s ability to write songs that immediately demand repeat listens.
 
While the music itself is evocative and propulsive, a fever dream all of its own, the lyrical content pushes the record even further into its own darkly thrilling realm. If the songs on Shadow On Everything were like chapters in a novel, then this time they’re short stories. Short stories connected by death and its effect on the characters in contact with it. “Death is what you make it” runs a lyric in “Sweat,” a line which may very well be the thread  that ties  these stories together.

BUY LP/CD

Bambara - Serafina (from the 'Stray' album out 2/14)

ANIMAL

Against The Day

Self Released 01/10/2019
Songwriters: Millie Duthie, Mitch Duce, Danny Southwell, Dan Hole 
Engineer/Producer: Josh (Hoagie) Harrison
Artwork: Sapphire Needham
MGMT: mhowes@theorchard.com

Two Sense

Death Stranding

Texas Drums Pt I & II

We are not music snobs. We prefer music connoisseurs.

Against The Day

Wolf Parade

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