We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Drowned Cities

from Symbiogenesis by Michael Bell

/

lyrics

This machine has built itself. It rises in the desert, from the oil, in blood and flame. Lines of robot soldiers advance in the poisonous haze. People and animals flee before them. Refugees pick their way through broken concrete, scattered clothes, and smoldering bodies.

It’s not the bright future we imagined. Where are our flying cars, we ask, our hotels on the moon? Those fleeing the sun gather at the steel fences raised by the north. They squat under their frayed plastic tarps and count coins. Men in hulking pickup trucks gaze at them through the bars, tapping their rifles.

The species of the Earth are dying. The forest is burning, cleared for beef. The sea is filling with plastic, and Amazon warehouses loom over vast cities made of cardboard and wire. The documentary images appear on our screens, but we don’t believe them. We are sure they are deep fakes. Someone used an AI to make them. It’s a scam. We only see what we want to believe. Until it arrives in a box it’s not real.

But we can close our eyes and peer a little way ahead. We see white crosses leaning over pyres of blackened bone, and ragged tents on the white house lawn, and a smoking sky humming with drones. The sea is churning through downtown Los Angeles, and. overloaded SUVs creep north on choked highways, men raging at each other through their windshields.

Trailing behind them, the pitted earth, pocked with bleeding holes.

credits

from Symbiogenesis, released August 17, 2023

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Michael Bell image

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.

contact / help

Contact Michael Bell

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

Michael Bell recommends:

If you like Michael Bell, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring interviews with LA music scene pillar Kamasi Washington, and new London-based duo Mrcy.

listen now