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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    The box set includes a numbered print of the limited edition, sound art cassette, a re-release of the original chapbook “The Front Lines of the War,” as well as hand-made materials and inserts. The coda is included as an insert, hand-printed on natural fiber paper made by an indigenous women’s collective in Chiapas, Mexico, and a unique distressing process for the cassette boxes, which parallels the element of randomness and glitching that is central to the production ethos of the album.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Front Lines of the War via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Streaming + Download

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lyrics

The Front Lines of the War

and other poems

Shan State Suite

i. Hsipaw

Arrive Hsipaw after 12-hour bus from Mandalay,
army trucks carry soldiers and guns through the night,
a teenage mother drives a motorbike
through the diesel haze,
one hand on the throttle
one hand holding a baby to her breast
as eighty miles away
a rebel army digs into the hills
waiting for a government attack
waiting for the generals to cough
soil their underwear
fall down drunken in a brothel
with flies buzzing above unmade beds—

meanwhile, international observers pass a hat
collecting accolades
for a peace process in which
bank presidents and foreign ministers
are politely asked
to pull their cocks out of the earth, refrain
from filling villages
with seeds of their ambition
which sprout into nothing but hunger
for the sake of some accountant’s bottom line.

Strip-mine consciousness,
lay open landscapes
like parting a pair of thighs
guided by market imperatives
and cash agendas,
twist a tourniquet between your legs,
still the hammers fall to earth
bang bang bang
to build another façade
another bloom of concupiscence
a looped dream we can’t awake from.


In the morning,
streets are gray with mist,
a wrack of twigs and leaves
along the river bank above the quay,
vestige of high water
months ago
in the rainy season.

A soldier in dirty fatigues
sits in a tea shop,
his AK
loose and easy between his legs,
he looks around with a lazy grin, and why not,
roads and towns belong to the regime.

The serving girl tightens her sarong
and brings a lighter
for my cheap cigar,
thanaka daubed across her cheeks,
totemic fingerpaint design,
pale yellow against her earth-brown skin.
I sip my tea from the saucer where it’s spilled
and try not to meet the soldier’s eye,

Pay two dimes
for my tea and cigar, then
walk back along the river
where the water continues to fall,
pack my bag in my guesthouse room
and wait for the call
to tell me where to go
to meet my contact for a ride
to join the rebel army in the hills.

credits

from The Front Lines of the War, released August 10, 2021

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Will Klingenmeier Denver, Colorado

An omnivore of sound, lover of monophonic plainchants, noise, and the dérive, Will Klingenmeier has spent the last fifteen years living as a borderline hermit developing a distinct sonic palate. He is a sound artist placing emphasis on indeterminacy, code, field recordings and synthesis. ... more

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