Maybe it was the bold new territory I went into, exploring the sounds of industry laced with the human voice, something natural and pure. And it doesn’t get much more industrial than a set of gas bottle holders clanking in an empty laundry, while I perform a soprano rap over the top. That was the pure part, obviously. I composed the rap while I was sitting on a bench across from a construction site, letting the songs flow into words and writing them down as they came to me, without editing. Every time an aluminum toolbox snapped shut, or that rattling produced by an under body box full of tools being opened, I felt them calling out. “Sing my song, Deirdre!” they called. “The world needs to know!”
The soprano rap goes for about seventeen minutes and is the first track on the album, entitled ‘Time of Churning Concrete Mixer, Lament of Toolbox, and Complaint of Peter Whose Wife Packed Him Vegemite and Cheese Sandwiches When She Knows He Only Like Them Separately and Not Together’. One entire verse is admonishing Peter for not making his own lunches.
I think this is my magnum opus, and everyone who hears it seems to agree. What strange rapport do I have with roof racks and bars, and other such products? What strange kinship with this symbol of the modern era? My strange genius may never be understood,
-Deirdre