Get all 66 Michael Bell releases available on Bandcamp and save 90%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Nothing Dies, Magic Hat, Funeral, Breacher, Utburd, Recurrence, Symbiogenesis, End of Days, and 58 more.
1. |
Fevers, Maps
05:26
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There were those whose faces gleamed
Whose eyes shone black with unknown feelings
Who looked past us at things we couldn't see
They rose on scented smoke and departed
Carried on a sigh
In the owl's beak
It was these ones who went into the sea
Into the old parts of the world
Where a thousand years is the crack of a whip
And they danced there
Under the gaze of death that opened for them like a flower
They could not say how they had returned
They smiled at us from their fevers
Whispering in unknown languages
Like secret songs
Or Maps
Or Doors
Or like dark holes in the riverbank
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2. |
Singularity
05:55
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The Singularity shakes free.
An engineer wakes in fear to see the universe expand in darkness forever. In his terror he shapes doll for himself and fucks it until it smiles up at him.
Terror and desire spread into addictions clutching at dreamers chasing ghosts through their bigger-than-ever displays into glistening hallways of artificial flesh and new worlds ripe for the killing.
Designers work tirelessly to perfect their illusions:
A woman who never lived is renowned for her beauty.
The dead are resurrected in light to sing for us again.
Students grow pallid masturbating in the gray light of their games.
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3. |
Voice in the Well
05:47
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4. |
A Smell Like Iron
07:20
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We were in retreat, walking through low burned hills, dropping things from our packs along the trail. The sky was hanging dust. It was always dark. No one spoke.
On our flank, something moved with us, vast and hidden. We knew it from its breathing, and because it took us, one or two at a time, as we walked.
When it came for me, it rose from the ground like heat, and a laughing voice, and a smell like iron.
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5. |
Buried Mind
04:05
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All travel has moved underground. We are blind now, and we listen with our skin, feeling out for the ones ahead, in the pressing dark.
We now have only two directions, above and below. Above is the cold, and we avoid it. Below is heat, and it draws us, so we travel always deeper, where the dirt is warm and smooth, like a mouth.
In time, we forget our bodies. We are a single buried mind, grasping and chewing.
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6. |
Cloud Walk
05:26
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7. |
The Body
06:52
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The body stumbles and slouches along the highway, blinking and baffled. It has forgotten what it lost. It stares open-mouthed into the distance until its skin cracks under the sun, and it collapses to the shoulder.
The only survivors are the teenaged ontologists stalking the tattooed maps of their own bodies, jigsaw charts of ink and blood and skin. They prove themselves to themselves with the rings and posts they use to claim this lip, this tongue, this brow.
The cameras are turned in their mounts. Photographer-spectators shout in ecstasy when they see themselves on stadium screens. “We are burning mirrors. We are dancing underground. Our arms reach into the hot light, and the voice in the booth says that there are those alive today who will never die.”
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8. |
City of Teeth
04:38
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The city rose from broken concrete and drifts of shattered glass, wood and plastic and human bodies lashed together with wire. It smoked, and stank, of hunger, and disease. It was filled with screams.
The city crawled across the plain, a pained, broken thing. Rotten teeth fell from its heights, and burned skin. Thousands of empty eyes stared out over its guns. It killed more than it ate, and left behind it a churned waste.
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9. |
Ravenwatch
05:51
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Here the rain falls light and steady. Grey green forests of hemlock and spruce climb toward the mountains in the east. To the west, a labyrinth of rocky islands, carved by glaciers 20,000 years ago.
Salmon ran down the rivers here once, on their great cyclic migrations, leaping at the rapids, where shaggy brown bears snapped them out of the air. Predatory whales, their long dorsal fins like black sails, chased seals in the channels between the islands, where ravens croaked from the trees, hidden.
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10. |
Kirlian Echo
05:36
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11. |
The Wolf Suit
06:04
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An F-15 pilot stares through his visor at his bright displays and things about numbers. The warplane is called “Eagle” in invocation of fading animal powers, torchlit ochre in cave galleries.
In the smoking ruin of a Madagascar forest, the last ring-tailed lemur curls up beside a felled rosewood and dies, and a tiny girl chalking animals on a sidewalk in Los Angeles puts angel wings on her smallest monkey. There are blue ones, pink ones. She colors them any way she wants. They are just stories now.
The wild rumpus is winding down, and Max is roaring from a cloud of gnats, a thousand miles of powdered bone in every direction. His gums are bleeding. He balls up a fevered fist inside the paw of his shredded wolf suit and shakes it at the white horizon.
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12. |
Ice and Bone
05:42
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I remember veils of cold mist drifting through forested hills, and our boots breaking thin sheets of transparent ice, the wet ground pulling at us, and I remember a splash of blood, bright in the snow, and empty bones blackening in the fire.
In the distance before us, on the frozen shore, a glimmering light, a line of smoke rising into the pale morning sky, a house of piled stone. Behind us, the ones who had stopped to sleep, and lingered there, ice and bone gleaming under the stars.
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13. |
Skeleton Blues
05:55
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14. |
Weeping Soldiers
06:58
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The exits are lost. When the beats end, sleepwalkers grope along the wet metal, looking for a seam, the illuminated sign to assure them an alarm will sound.
Where did we come in? Some remember a sheet of falling water, warm as skin, others, a trail of dust, a dark window, a blue glow in the living room.
Images roll and flash behind fluttering eyelids. The attached electrodes record everything.
Our bodies ache, bound by a shimmering thread drawn through fevered children and their sleepless mothers, and those who give their lives for strangers, and weeping soldiers.
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Michael Bell Bellingham, Washington
A Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too.
Some of this is music for video games. The rest is a fairly raw document of my ongoing attempt to find something new among the blinking lights in my studio at home.
Michael Bell recommends:
Noveller got me started. This is essential listening for guitar explorers. Always inspires me to continue the search for new ways to shape the air.
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This is the sound of music after music. For brave listeners (or those, like me, who aspire to be).
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Some Music for Robby Müller
by SQÜRL
If you find yourself washed in blissful guitar feedback as you play alone in your attic studio at 3am, this is for you.
go to albumIf you like Michael Bell, you may also like:
Minecraft - Volume Alpha
by C418
supported by 6 fans who also own “The Breathing Bridge”
Thank you for creating beautiful memories C418 <3
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supported by 4 fans who also own “The Breathing Bridge”
What a fun journey this song is! Quite the ride! So buckle up and ride the waves of this tune!
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Disasters for Piano
by David Peacock
David Peacock reimagines the Disasterpeace score for piano.
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