Amerika

There is a darkness engulfing your country. It has been there for a long time. You have greeted it good morning every day and said good night every evening. It fills up the empty space between you and the different screens you use to communicate with anyone who is not yet infected.

It is a rot that turns your skin into an enemy, a fever that drains all words of their meaning and a headache so heavy that life has turned to a long suffering. Somehow you still survive and walk among the dead as if you were one of them. Without your mask they would shy away in horror, or shoot a silver bolt through your heart, screaming ”monster, die monster!”

Our music has always been for you. From the start of our journey in 2016 and the debut album 100 Faces we wanted to help you survive the long nights and the bleak light of dawn when scavengers and parasites were crawling back to their damp caves to sleep until the end of day.

We promised no salvation and no resolution, just the consolation.

Our second album Dissidentica in 2017 caught the ear of many uninfected humans who recognized themselves in the lyrics and vocals. They knew there was something wrong when their family members peeled off their thin soul membrane and their eyes turned into the void rage of frightened spiders.

Fear turned to hate and Patriot Child was our third album in 2018. For our warning against the envy of the infected we paid a high price. It was silent around us. Some uninfected dared to come close enough to hear the songs but most ran away. We attracted the frenzy of the infected and it was indeed a solitary life as creators of human music in a world where utopian corporations unleashed their minions to trash and tear all original life to pieces.

We returned to the roots of the plague on our fourth album Airing from Kolyma in 2018 and for those who dreamed of a return to the age before the pandemic of the mind virus the music helped them push forward, relentlessly, trying to piece together the memories of a functional society and the zombie riots they saw again, and again, and again. We once again offered no salvation and no resolution. Only a voice along the way to cool them down and wipe the blood from their eyebrows.

Our fifth album Iconoclastic in 2019 marked the end of an era in our lives. We recorded the sound of uprising by the uninfected, angered by quarantine laws that took the liberty from those who had no virus and gave it to feral ghouls who no longer reasoned, felt or could experience neither love nor hate, just desire and envy. But few could still see the darkness that would come. We asked them all: will you look into the abyss this time or do you still hope for the infected to accept your existence?

It became dangerous to be associated with us, because we did not pretend to be infected. We did not hide our names and did not hide our intentions. Not for a single hour of any single day did we disguise ourselves as carrying the virus. We grew tired of the lack of courage.

Then for many years we were quiet and released only two singles: Gospel X in 2019 and Stray Wolf in 2020. We did not even care to reach out to those who were uninfected any longer. Too many ran way in panic at the sight of us.

We moved from a suburban flat after our neighbors almost burned down the house, a bomb exploded a few blocks away and an infected high on drugs fired a gun at the playground outside our living room. We left for a small village where rumor said there were high levels of immunity. But nowhere is free from infection, there are just smaller numbers of infected.

For some reason we returned to making music again. It was in 2021 when we released our sixth album Malaise. We saw the poison they sold as coffee in their vans of delightment, we saw the pills of happiness they said would bring a smile on your face in a rigor mortis of joy, we saw the infection spread with every word on every website not yet banned by the corporations who manufactured the disease.

Then two years followed in secluded solitude. Did some of the uninfected pretend to be infected as a form of protection or did some infected pretend to be uninfected to share with us the rotten fluid of their destroyed minds?

In the silence emerged our seventh album Midnight Oracle in 2023.

It was a journey of sadness. We have all lost someone and sometimes we even lost ourselves. We still did not offer any salvation and no resolution. All we gave the uninfected was a sign of life: we live, we are not infected, we still communicate with you.

”Why do you not make happy music, so that my face may be smiling and my mood may be jolly?” a man asked online, proving to himself and us that he did not realize the nature of the disease. Our songs are not anthems of hope but the rhythms of a ghost dance. If you listen to us there is a voice inside you who knows the truth: we are falling like rays of light into a pit so infinite and dark that nothing can ever escape its grasp. This is the transformation of uninfected to infected and infected to artificial intelligence. We are dancing in the last few minutes of a day that lasted from the first use of fire and speech by our ancestors, unless the hand of any god strikes down to destroy the infection.

If you listen to our music, your soul is not tainted by the disease. Nobody with an infection can endure us. You are immortal, they are not. The endless flow of welfare money they worship, the admiration they crave like colors on an infinite flat hologram, and the utopia of me, me, me they desire offer no life beyond death.

The new album that we currently record will bring you back to the origin of the human era. It is a walk across Eurasia, the great mother of all who can speak and light a fire. It is the dawn of Indie-European Music that have carried the rhythms and songs of our ancestors through the ages into our lives. It will be simple. I will be raw. It will ask the same question as all our former albums: have you stared long enough into the abyss or have you turned away your eyes in fear of what it is that will look back at you? Are you infected or uninfected? Is that a hint of virus you see in the corner of your eye?

If you dare to face it we will meet soon.

John Dübeck, lyricist and producer of Lilou & John

Tags: indie music, music, pop culture