12/14/2020> For our continued daily liner-noting of Herd of Birds, the 2nd # on the album is "Colony Cullapse". When we released it as a single last month we posted the cover image + video but didn't talk much about the song. The impetus for the song came when we discovered a carpenter bee making it's home in our fence (see post #772). Like the last #, "Colony Cullapse" is also about collective behavior, but instead of birds this # is about bees (+ "the birds + the bees"), the holistic nature of social insex, what the conchusnest of 1 individual be must bee like + then applying this to humun social media + "handholding machines" that lead us around w/out individual awareness of what we're doing, let alone where we're going as a group. But we don't want to x-plane the lyrics away, make of it what u will.

> Musically "Colony Cullapse" starts by feeding off the resinants from the # before (like all our albums, the trax were meant to be herd to in order, each track melting into the next), our Roman harmonium tweaked @ resinant freakwindsea of D or E. The page we mistakenly 1st showed as the song structure for "Rₒ" might actually bee the blueprint for "Colony Cullapse"...

... tho we probly deleted the originul acoustic guitar + layered over synths, keyboards (w/ modified string, piano, clarinet + rabab LPX presets), loops + highly processed guitar ("triplet tick tock" FX pedal) going for a sorta dreamy Blonde Redhead symphonic sound. Hear's the video + lyrics.

COLONY CULLAPSE

the choir sings
"cullapsing colony"
the choir sings
"cullapsing colony"

the bee she dreamed enuff for a lifetime
(1 + 1 for all)
drilling holes to fill our brain
(in trephinating cascades)
a reign of brood came crashing from the sky
(from comet tales)
from higher up then u kin name
(ripping a page from the book)

drizzling down on dandelion leaves
(the greens taste clean)
the world a buzz in handholding machines

patched together to cobble a collective hole
(pieced from the whole)
spiraling down in bait + switch
(the earthworm writhes on the hook)
the fuse is lit, the unseen dream foretold
(who could predict?)
the snake eats its one tale w/o a hitch
(each piece grows a new heart)

the fallow fields regrow w/ wildflowers
(dazed poppies in bloom)
the world ripped anew in regenerating genes

the ebbing spins a web in the delta's mouth
(from hear to de-Nile)
"flow" spells "wolf" in the moon's riverse
(in the wax + wane)
the smell of napthalene won't save us now
(from the underwear drawer)
our mothers clothes decay to dirt
(tilled w/ sweat + toil)

as fathers fumble for their flies to preach
(keep the kids outta reach)
bumbling diatribes of birds + bees d-zzz

the choir sings
"cullapsing colony"