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Volcano Volcano

by Steven Lambke

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    Volcano Volcano pressed into immaculate black vinyl grooves. Full colour jacket. Printed inner lyric sleeve.

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Holy Smokes, it's a moving sale! It's a festive deal! It's 3 albums by Steven Lambke for one incredibly low price! Combo contains Volcano Volcano, Dark Blue, and Days Of Heaven on LP format. Original pressings. Black Vinyl. Beautiful artwork. Poems in Sound.

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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 10 Steven Lambke releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Frenzy of Our Dreams - reconstructions, versions, dialogues, Volcano Volcano, Sea Level / Acorns And Beach Stones, Every Lover Knows / Deep Water, dub.tape, Former Firsts, Dark Blue, Revolution C, and 2 more. , and , .

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1.
The rain will raise the mint. The night will raise the moon. Rat-bit fence like a rotten tooth. The world is reordered from below. There’s floating lights behind your eyes, battleships and jellyfish. From the ditch of fiction truth will rise. The world is reordered from below. Third floor window, curtains raised. Raise the window, call my name: Volcano Volcano Smash the plate and disappear. Distant thunder coming near. The stutter raised the truth to ear. The world is reordered from below. Every heart is laboring. Eternal clatter of the broken things. All together we softly sing the world is reordered from below. Third floor window, curtains raised. Raise the window, call my name: Volcano Volcano
2.
High tide. The world filled to the brim. The water is filled with floating things that look like faces. A faded old photo of an old brass band. A young man, just like me, but younger. Running wild where the wild winds blow. Naked as a shaking bough in the morning. Crown of rosemary, and a rosemary gown. I set myself in the mirror. A cold dark night. A waning moon. A shooting star. Some wounds heal too quickly. A shooting star. A passing flame. My hunger is just the same. It’s like a spider. Running wild where the wild winds blow. Naked as a shaking bough in the morning. Crown of rosemary and a rosemary gown. I set myself in the mirror. Raspberry lipstick. Blackberry shade. I’ve seen everything in the mirror. High tide. The world filled to the brim. The water’s filled with floating things that look like faces. Running wild where the wild winds blow. Naked as a shaking bough in the morning. Crown of rosemary, and a rosemary gown. I see myself in the mirror. I’ve seen everything in the mirror.
3.
Full moon, four nights running, must mean something big is coming, and everywhere that I’ve been running, you’ve been running too. Naked in the moonlight, bloodied by a spoon fight, April, May, and June, right? Time is running too. April, May, and June. Lucky stars, a golden grommet. Vomit in the garden bucket. “Look out! Snakes!” a voice shouted, and there’s spiders too. Hey, hey could that be you, whistling my favourite tune? Midnight to the morning dew, I’ll keep whistling through April, May and June. All my joys have multiplied, numbered like the coffee grinds, and everything that can shine, shines, and time, always circling, circles wide. Hey, hey could that be you, whistling my favourite tune? Midnight to the morning dew, we’ll keep whistling through April, May and June
4.
What brave thoughts the sky reveals, the pink scraped sky, faded blue bruise bandaged red. In that joy of atoms pulsing, the colours all aligned, faded blue bruise bandaged red. We are fear-filled dreamers, joyful, tall, and brave, long shadows bending at the knees. Long-legged spider standing tall above the water, reflected blue bruise bandaged red. What brave thoughts might bind us now where fear and property divide? What common cause will honour, what common dreams will hold? The evening sky is scoured blue, smoke-shined pink and orange, storm-beaten, free-hearted, and bold. A climbing black bear, in a bare, black tree, on a thin branch, bending low. Bends low, but holds.
5.
It’s a tight fit. Every margin measured to the thousandth inch. Rag soaked in solvent. A valve knocking out of sync. Thick stink of oil. Spinning stones and sparks and spiders lay their burning poisons in your ear. Windshield smashed with insects. Frogs pitched through dust and distance. A body lost between the highway and the river. Tape deck on the seat beside me squealing codes and signals, like leaning diamond into metal. Spinning stones and sparks and spiders lay their burning poisons in your ear. I was acting on the license, believing in the perfect silence of the moment. It’s a sound that shapes the world. My father deaf. My own ears ringing. Bats in blue twilight, in the violent grinding less of everything. Spinning stones and sparks and spiders lay their burning poisons in your ear.
6.
Every step returning is just as sorely made as those departing, and the same quickening pace that every lover knows that every lover knows that every lover knows The truth is every truth is tested by the world until it’s busted, twisted, or frayed, as every lover knows as every lover knows as every lover knows Love is just a witness to this century of reckoning and pain. Eternity is here and home is far away. Landowner, at the hardware store, will be defeated by the summer and the days of heavy storm that every lover knows that every lover knows that every lover knows Love is just a witness to this century of reckoning and pain. Eternity is here and home is far away.
7.
Truth Marks 02:48
Surprising flowers springing forth from every crack and crevice. I never noticed, of course, the chorus of sparrows singing. I did not speak the language, this debate of angels maybe flashing quickly in the corner of my mind. Where every surprising moment is surprisingly rhyming with me, every surprising moment arriving unexpectedly. Sunrise in Toronto, black butterflies fluttering. I’m limping now, and stuttering, my face disguised. Lilac bloom, hanging fruit, laughter makes a squealing tune, a streetcar grinding sharply at the brakes. And every surprising moment is surprisingly rhyming with me, every surprising moment arriving unexpectedly. Another hour shakes with wonder and it’s looking like the summer soon will break its pounding heart across the sky, and mostly I’m just hoping that no one here has noticed I’m looking a little older around the eyes. And every surprising moment is surprisingly rhyming with me, every surprising moment arriving unexpectedly.
8.
Sea Level 02:39
Eye level Sea level Evil all around me (I see evil all around me) You know what I’m after You know what I need Honey water when I’m thirsty (I see evil all around me) Sweet water Maple tree Hang on tight climbing bean! (I see evil all around me) Life among the ruins Life among the weeds Honey water, bumble bee (I see evil all around me) Blackberry bushes Falling leaves I see evil all around me (I see evil all around me)
9.
What a mess we’ve made. Shattered glass, broken frame. The moon is in the ocean. Waving. Wavering. Turning over. How will I sleep tonight? Imagine yourself some months younger. An impossible hunger returning to your veins like the tide. Crabs crawling under every stone. How will I sleep tonight? Sky below. Stone above. If your lips are sewn shut, if your mind is a serpent, turned inside out, turn the planet over. How will I sleep tonight? Turn the planet over. Turn the planet over. Turn the planet over, and turn out the light.
10.
I am not alone. Alone or unadorned. No! Wherever I go, sorrow and doubt follow me. My pockets filled with polished stones and polished shells swing from my belt. Oh! Wherever I go, there’s a jingle jangle that follows me! Through the scratch and golden hay. Through the brambled bush and mountain scree. Oh! I’m not alone! Bow-legged shadows follow me. Across the gleaming river, the shivering river, to my lover’s shinning bed. Oh! Wherever I go sorrow and doubt follow me! The trumpet player climbs from the pit. The player then salutes the day. Lo! Wherever they go, with naked poets following. At the distant shimmering edge, the water’s edge, at the end of day. Oh! I’m not alone! Sorrow and doubt follow me. Oh! Wherever I go, some kind of shimmering light surrounds me.
11.
The water is perfect calm. The moon is nearly doubled, a rise and then a fall,
 and everyone in town is sleeping. The branches are bent low. The sky has turned a blacker blue, and darker still below where my green eyes are shining. The poet’s crown is torn, and all the ripened fruit imprisoned by the thorn, but justice, in the night, is watching. So make no apology for the frenzy of your dreams. And dream with me, dream with me, dream with me tonight, and dream eternally.

about

VOLCANO VOLCANO
album notes by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

I’d describe Steven Lambke as a working musician – that is, someone who is embedded in, responsible to, and who holds space for a community of artists that create against the odds of the music industry, without contracts, awards, and acolytes. Lambke is the sort of person that you can go to with nothing but an idea, and he’ll do whatever he can to support you in actualizing that idea. That’s rare.

I first met Steve several years ago in a park in Peterborough, ON. He was dressed in his own humility, apologetically selling his own merch. I bought a copy of his chapbook “Lyrics”. He seemed embarrassed at the very transaction. I liked that.

He’s seen the music world from all angles – as a singer-songwriter performing as Baby Eagle, as a touring boy-band rock-and-roller as a member of the Constantines, as the Creative Director of Sappyfest in Sackville, NB and finally, as a co-founder of the artist-run label You’ve Changed Records. These experiences have led Lambke to create on the margins of an industry driven by sales and a particular kind of recognition, and to think carefully about how he embodies his practice of art-making, and the work his music is doing in the world.

I’m writing this in the dreariness of the end of October in Ontario, while the pandemic continues to crush independent music and art-making. Tom Power is on the radio interviewing Ed Shereen on his new record. Shereen is talking about his worst nightmare – which is releasing a record into the void, with little engagement from the public, without radio play and without as Shereen says, being part of the conversation.

Maybe that sounds reasonable to the audience of CBC’s q.

This sounds absurd to me. Not only is Shereen’s worst nightmare the reality most musicians live within, but our reality is one that despite dismal bank accounts is a reality that is also full of joy, richness, community, and meaning if you know where to listen. Lambke’s new release, Volcano Volcano is the evidence.

Volcano Volcano is an invitation, an exploration of potential, an opportunity for listening and thinking and relating that holds space for otherwise thinking and shared meaning-making. The making of this record, from its sonics and aesthetics to its lyrics and composition communicate a vital potential to communally re-order, re-invent and re-connect to something beyond ourselves. This requires something out of the ordinary from both performer and audience. It asks us to think of music and performance in an open and expansive way, beyond the normal separate enclosures wherein the performer turns up the volume demanding to be heard and seen, basking in applause, before selling merch side stage, and then driving away to a sad motel somewhere. It requires us to meet.

Written over the past few years, not specifically during the pandemic, and recorded at Camera Varda (the studio built by Daniel Romano) in Welland in January 2021, the album’s approach spilled out of the studio and into the real world. Lambke took the basic studio-quality bed tracks home, taking responsibility over the rest of the process, experimenting with singing, mixing, and utilizing a series of (in his words) “junky instruments” – $30 guitars from Goodwill, a recorder and a melodica/melodion, dollar store shakers and the cheapest tambourine - sound making vessels that in the hands of an amateur might be cringe worthy heavy-handed metaphor. In Volcano Volcano, these are the moments where practice braids together sound and lyrics - and those are the moments that feel most alive, stretching one’s expectations of the very act of recording and listening.

It seems clear to me that the aural was a foundational methodology of the making of this record. In “Brave Thoughts”, the time is played loose, and playing like that requires a commitment to listening to the other sounds in the band and allowing the lyrics to become embodied in sound. That deep practice of listening then becomes a meditation on meaning making. Lambke’s lyrics are coded, layered, and full of multiple meanings, and yet free of symbolism for the sake of symbolism. Lyrically the album is specific, and an affirmation of the natural worlds around us. These songs are filled with tiny moments that daily life can gloss over, but where minds like Steven Lambke’s find abundance. Both lyrically and musically, this album makes songs and poems and worlds out of the rudimentary, ordinary, everyday things at hand.

There are parts of Volcano Volcano that are an excavation into the evils that engulf us, into the mess we’ve made of life and the world, but with the purpose, I think, of dreaming together a new world “re-ordered from below”. There is a cast of characters in these songs that provide the sustenance for this: high tides, worlds filled to the brim, full moons and shooting stars, sunsets, daybreaks and twilight, reconstituted truths and love anyway, sidewalk-crack flowers, sparks and moons in the ocean, a living, a singing anyway. A sort of way of living that mines the everyday for surprise, tiny burst of joy and a dedicated practice of hope. Listen to the chorus of the title track, “Volcano Volcano” and you’ll be whistling it around the house in your jogging pants for hours after the record ends. In “April, May, June” the choir of junk is a having a spoon fight, naked under the moon. The final track, “Dream with Me”, is the perfect summation of the record. It invites us, and compels us, creators and listener, to dream together, through sorrow, doubt and fear.

Volcano Volcano lets us all be “fear-filled dreamers, joyful, tall, and brave”, and within those dreams, we learn new possibilities.

credits

released April 29, 2022

Performed by:
Steven Lambke – vocals, guitars, percussion, melodion, recorder
Daniel Romano – drums, organ, vocals
David Nardi – bass
with:
Carson McHone – vocals
William Kidman – guitar solo on “Sorrow And Doubt”

Recorded by Daniel Romano at Camera Varda and at home in Toronto by Steven Lambke
Mixed by Steven Lambke
Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering

Written by Steven Lambke
Artwork by Shary Boyle
Layout and Design by Paul Henderson

Thank you:
Kenneth Roy Meehan, Roddy Rosetti, Ian Romano, Julianna Riolino, Kerri Reid and Tyler Brett at The Sointula Art Shed, The Nordic Artists' Centre Dale, Adam Sturgeon, Shotgun Jimmie, everyone at Sappyfest, Colin Medley, José Contreras, Simone Schmidt, Nick Dourado, Colleen Collins, Kevin Howes, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Bucky Buckler and Robin Walker, Jon Mckiel, Jay Crocker, Mathias Kom and Ariel Sharratt, Vish Khanna, Niko Stratis, Nancy Urich

©2022

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