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Broken Ladder

by Young Weather

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j_schlen
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j_schlen This album sounds like driving down a gravel road at sunset beneath a sky that's foreboding and comforting all at once. An absolutely stunning work. Favorite track: Ash Lots (You and Your Respect).
Lynden Williams
Lynden Williams thumbnail
Lynden Williams The whole album feels like a deep dive into sound design and percussion but the way Seven Brittle Beacons builds and delivers was especially interesting... I love the placement of the percussion and guitars. <3 Favorite track: Seven Brittle Beacons.
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1.
Heaven copies the feelings you are But transit never took us that far When we lived by St. Katherine's Water And the silent sky always seemed to chatter I never knew the numbers of my friends Now I'm forgetting faces, is this how it ends? I couldn't carry you all, I can't carry us But I'd rather be here, if all that's left is to rust We can't go back there We were never there Under the interstate Bridged from the cuff of weather There was a warm table Where we did our best to remember
2.
Oh that I could be mischievous without my usual fuss Oh that I could be unclasped handiwork winter-bloomed with red And water-stained with promises You holding these red buds in water You murmur in the resonant ice That spends all morning sketching a map down the rock To make the humans walk in patterns strange as words Ridiculous to the birds But love is rare, I heard Strung out, and absurd
3.
Papermaps 04:13
I used to spend my scrolling minutes Counting all the paths Back when we were using paper maps You could have called me palmary Marked the route to south of Boston The townships salted and grey By the time we got to Jackson Heights Our phones had dies, and the atlas yielded to the rain I keep my useful days Backpacked with me But at this point of caring Are we all just kidding? Aren't we all just kidding Ourselves?
4.
Coin-mouthed, we crossed the stream Under trees scribed with the angry memory of lightning Looking for a view I have to climb to Looking for elsewhere I was hoping all the beauty would make us better But all I remember belongs to the fire You know when the land doesn't love you back Like you know when a blessing is really an attack I want to be granite-quiet In cairn-toppling winds, safe as lichen I want to be granite-quiet But to my friends, close as lichen
5.
I see your outline In the long-rotted sun At the same distance To all I wanted to become I'm too tall to hide In half-round light around you I'll leave no blossomed time Unpicked beneath the moon Table the regrets for another rhyme When you've found no safety in my side I'm too tall to hide In half-round light around you
6.
Astonishment 03:45
A place that I know pauses And all the signifying lines all stretch Flat as an EKG, when all that fills the room Is a machine, breathing It's then you can evict The faith-healers and materialists They can all breathe a sigh And the experts will shuffle their pages: their only cards You were in the air then, like a power line All wires and poles as we freeze in our homes So goes your voice: we cannot follow the song But we can bend it's direction, we can mend its inflection Until we can understand
7.
The light here is low: expensive, romantic It's a relapse It reminds us who we lost When we became who we are And your kind words call up A ghost I've never let go So Suddenly I find myself trying to find The smallest gravity, the tallest lamp, the cup of human kindness If it still holds anything at all If you aren't commenting all over my quiet If, like me, you're just fraying Then let's let them all down together I'm out in the towers' care Where I am fitted to the air No more a fire-tower-lightning-rod-made-unasked-into-a-mirador-by-God Suddenly I find myself trying to find The smallest gravity, the tallest lamp, the cup of human kindness If it still holds anything at all
8.
You can't believe what they will take But your body is no stranger To punches from the solar wind While they lash their fate to middle Geneva So when you leave, they can blame it on short memory You'll say to me: "Didn't we ride the ferry all evening?" You'll say to me: "didn't we sit and see God in everything?" But nothing kicks like the plunder Of remorse for the prior days You're now back to being just another stranger Reading at the wharf, ready to disobey You'll say to me: "Didn't we ride the ferry all evening?" You'll say to me: "didn't we sit and see God in everything?" You'll say to me: "Any human to another is a welcome dream" You'll say to me: "I'm having trouble leaving the things that seem" I put on my version of wings To put some distance between Myself and impossible things That I still carried over the quiet sea
9.
All our friends in the fable A parliament of words A station light at the table You were all I heard We wake up drowning in conation From the time that's still un-hewn Where memory scrawls into notation Of the time we yield under the moon Holding our strings up to the other Measuring the credible Hoping my words are still a murmur A filament that's bondable
10.
Genug 05:26
The weight of all the pennies in America Silted into flooding rivers Heavier than love And just like it: never enough I found what I wanted to say to you: "Too many things are true at once in our hearts" I found you staring at the way we grow When we grow apart
11.
Our tiny, clicking villages Breeze-leafing across the lawn Of our awkward death-days Where liars yet hold sway Our children dance around the table While plagues watch in from the future While the loudest men put on crowns of tinder and walk out into the lightning
12.
All of the versions of my body Pass through the photos on the walls I am smoke and dust and pleasant Words that never rise to passion Where pity lingers into being friends I need every word that you can send As light from the land we don’t share I’m still the same: insufficient A facsimile of the gist of it But we’ve survived on less I’m borrowing all the beacons From west to east Can you hear me? Can you see me?
13.
14.
Quiet me with birds and blue cold Traffic and people to overhear and ignore Cranes will transfigure the stolen air In the sky I'm just getting to know Will you forget all our words on the matter As I pull up behind me a broken ladder is it one you could still love? Even after you have climbed up? I threw the end of the string as far as I could Even unto the closed heart of the flatlands, Even unto the future lost to exit ramps, Even unto the end of the world

about

in midwinter of 2021 i sat with a couple of rack-mounted effects units (gifts from a friend) and listened to a simple synthesizer drone for a little while. this drone sent a slow spark through whatever muscles tell & help me to write new songs, and try to hand them over to folks with a modicum of thoughtfulness.

in the past year, our family has relocated, we've watched things build and crumble alongside the rest of you, and i have tried to put some of that into a language game here.

the past half-decade (or more) of young weather has been oscillating between various instrumental combinations, live performance approaches, and of course...trying to lick the stamp of a genre each time, only to have it feel somewhat insufficient to the postage required.

these songs are an attempt to not only put voice to aches and observations, but to also embrace the streams of genre and influence that inform my writing approaches both "conventional" and "experimental," inasmuch as we can make use of those terms in a helpful, and not polemic way.

several of these pieces are a handful of years old, and finally found the right character to release in full - and adapt to the themes of this form of life. most are quite recent, forming from skeletal textures wrought from a modular synth; growing atop some harebrained attempt at an odd meter pocket; taking sketches from all manner of sources and building them up, or tearing them down.

a deep thank you to my family, to my friends, to michael and aaron for their musical contributions (but moreso their friendship), to jake and bill at c & c custom drums, old blood noise endeavors, walrus audio, and to you for listening.

"i still love you, broken ladder"

credits

released August 5, 2022

all songs written and performed by Dustin Ragland
with Aaron Cacho: Guitars on "Pear and Apple"
and Michael Trepgnier: Synths, Samples, Percussion on "Frontera Sin Fin" and "Ash Lots (You and Your Respect)"

all music copyright 2022 six and one half doesn't the other?

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Young Weather Atlanta, Georgia

Young Weather is the project of Dustin Ragland & various collaborators in both studio and live settings through the years. Wrapping ambient electronic sound with a meter-hopping acoustic rhythm section - all around allusion-heavy lyricism.

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