AKAUZAZTE (Euskalerria/Basque Country, Xpain)

AKAUZAZTE was born in 1992, in Euskalerria or the Basque Country, oficially xpain. These are times of confusion: conflicts, injustice, poverty, supremacy of money, global warming, environmental pollution, destruction of mother nature, our senses overwhelmed with too much information and images. There are neither electrified fences nor watchtowers in our concentration camp, but we are prisoners nevertheless: Orwell, Ballard and Burroughs had already warned us about it. In the midst of such a pandemonium we find a group of craftsmen called Akauzazte, a group of musicians who have been forging their unique style for more than ten years now. A style that keeps out of commercial considerations, trends or musical schools. A style in which modernity and primitivism join hands. A style that bears no resemblance to anything which has recently been done in the Basque Country or in the rest of Spain. Akauzazte are used to walking through hardly trodden paths: they are nomads in the middle of their desert crossing, workers who have created their own concept of music, always faithful to their way of thinking, fearless of being shunned, ostracised or ignored by critics and audience alike. The music of Akauzazte is cut in stone and wrapped in rough and wrinkled layers. Its sides are irregular, splintered and sharp. It smells like burning tyre and melting plastic. The music of Akauzazte requires an active listening process on the part of the listener: the songs impose their own rules, they are neither pleasant nor easy to listen to, an effort has to be made in order to reach their epicentre. The music of Akauzazte is like the murmur of industrial cities at dawn; like the silence of a huge concrete, steel and glass skyscraper; like the lava flowing down the hill that devastates (slow but inexorably) everything it finds; like those fears that lurk in our collective subconscious only to emerge in our nightmares; like all the hate, anger and passion that we have in our tiny hearts. (Òscar Ruiz Fort) Live from slaughter-home/Abbatoir/Matadero of Azkoitia, the light band for resistance, auto-production, distribution, copy-left and culture free circulation.

akauzazte, 2004, by Baxi Ubeda

AKAUZAZTE: LYRICS

ENLATATUA / CANNED DEMO (1995)

1. Dolar Megafonoetatik (From Dollar Megaphones)
Eyes closed snake words

2. Eta zuk begirazun arrarorik somatzen al duzu komunetik ateratzean? (Do you see strange looks when you come out of the toilet?)
Shitpoems talk of love and the architecture expresses schizophrenia. Children under the sun and the moon, bodies washed with mud, they cry about their anger and loneliness in the days of their lives or pray for the end, trapped in their glass cages, as if days were long and dreams were evil.

3. Intsektu antolatuen gizartea (Society of organised insects)
We live in absolute darkness, eternal underground miners; people walking in all directions along corridor crossings in the mound-like cities. Interior architecture designed by and for us, true precision workers; we have produced “x” millions today. We, the insects, thousands of inhabitants, form the best organised society. We own two-way streets, bridges, public buildings, private homes, engineers and chemists, we’ve got kings and queens, soldiers and police. Our bodies are armoured, when we attack we die but never surrender. We widen our domain from inside to outside, we receive the signal from our brain, instinctive timing device, ready to attack, we’ll knock down buildings; we receive the signal in our brain, instinctive timing device, ready to attack, we’ll knock down buildings; we receive the signal in our brain, instinctive timing device, ready to attack, we’ll knock down buildings.

4. Atzerritarra (Foreigner)
I’ve got out of the ship from a sea of lies in order to run on the grey grass; I’ve climbed all the hills and, having asked the tortoises which was the best path, I’ve come to the centre of your heart. There, your heartbeat creates a noisy life within the twisted and infinite streets of my mind.

5. Ur gaineko bitsetan (On the water foam)
“I feel we’re going down every time we set limits to time”, says an elderly man next to me. I’m aware that this world is not only mine and that the burden of a long life is too heavy to carry it forward. I’ve been blinded by the deep lights of excess! We’ll fill the wide mouth of the sea with our own rubbish and cover the blue sky with the grey smoke of our hate, although the face of the sea is too long to build a wall before it and the sky is too big to cover it with smoke. “I’ve lost all the friends I loved!”, says a child, starving to death next to me. “Money is the only god of this world”, he says, showing his rotten teeth: that is what life has taught him in his short life. We’re blinded by the deep light of excess and killed by the sharp spears of selfishness! Someday we’ll realise that we are not protected against the closed windows in our houses and that they are lost, victims of our selfishness and excesses. Eight endless stories, on the water foam. People in the hopeless – dry fountain – leaky bottle territory, sink!

6. Denboraren jabe (Master of time)
I’ll eat the beginning of time in order to deny the creation of all living beings. I’m the master of time, master of a life with a beginning, master of a life without end. Disgusting human being, someday you’ll die and I’ll destroy heaven so that you get away from me! I am god and I deny the creation of all human beings.

7. Gaur euria egin du (It rained today)
It rained today, soaking heads and bodies. It rained today above all the moons and stars. All lovers have danced with the rain the suicide of the sea. It rained on me today.

8. Kuasare 108 (Quasar 108)
In the auto-gravitational area, piles of stars cast their light around a black hole; contrary forces keeping the balance.

9. Galdua (Lost)
Lost soul adrift. I am an animal, television images, newspaper stories, I am a wild goat, nature is violence, cruel innocence, stars in the roof, neurosis is a deformed religion.

10. Hegoekira begira (Facing south-east) Lyrics by Anari
When birds die, do they fall down or do they kill themselves? And the trees in the gardens of madhouses, are they insane? And all those people going out every night looking for someone-something, do they find anything? And when trees die, do they fall down or do they kill themselves? And the birds in the gardens of madhouses, are they insane? And all those people going out every night looking for someone-something, do they find anything? And when those people die, do they fall down or do they kill themselves? And the trees in the gardens of madhouses, are they insane? And those birds going out every night looking for someone-something, do they find anything? And when birds die, do they fall down or do they kill themselves? And all those people walking in the gardens of madhouses, are they really insane? And when night is falling, do those trees in the gardens of madhouses give shade to all those people looking for something-someone? And those people, have they ever found a bird that has fallen down or killed itself?

UR GARDENAK / CLEAR WATERS (1998)

1. Hiltzen garenoi (To those who die)
Everything remains to be said, and the words you have seized from me will give us, one day, the forgotten memories, the silenced smiles. I am not afraid of the words that can arise between you and me.

2. Melilla
Instrumental.

3. Distopiaren egunak (Dystopian days)
Weakness is the only truth in the dystopian days. Stomachs beaten by hunger with no other option but looking ahead. Heads poisoned with money will never understand anything so that in the dreams of the exhausted earth new buildings are possible.
4. Tanta
Instrumental

5. Zentrifugo (Centrifugal) Includes words by Álvaro Cunqueiro and Bob Dylan
In the loneliness of my white lady I saw centrifuged heads slid down in diamond highways that nobody uses. Can you hear me, my love, mine, in my river adrift without ending it is perhaps madness this attempt to imprison love words and try to make a song for you.

6. Itsasoaren malko artean (Among sea tears)
Instrumental.

7. Erratua (Failed)
Have you ever heard the melodies of falling pain? Real are ignorance and violence. Real are fear and renunciation. Like you and me, damned, like this failed dance.

8. Atzerritarra II (Foreigner II)
Analysing... all the senseless images I keep, I want to set madness free, I leave my brain unprotected for those who want to enter. I hate your words, your looks, because they deny dreams, and the future is death in this town of lies. To those who want to hear it, I’ll say it again and again, I’m not from here, I’m not from here...

9. Pottoka Lyrics by Carlos Desastre
Wild horses which, from time to time, deal with men. Wild horses drawing sharp bends in the slopes of the mountain (I want to go with them – where them) My feet follow them, awkward, stiff; I crouch down to touch their tracks, smell their shit (grass – ground) I follow them with my eyes and dream to be them (shit – grass – ground)

10. Aurka (Versus)
A tyre, obscene, inside me. The product rounds the man. Love the diameter. Let’s be concentric. Organise the welfare (The meaning bores)

11. Akatsgabea Lyrics by Charles Bukowsky

12. Lo kanta (Lullaby)
Like a worm

13. Antzina, basabereek (The past, the animals)
There was a time, animals I couldn’t say if frightened or because of the loathing they feel. Everybody has left him along except rats.

14. Arnasa falta denean (When the breath lacks)
The mirror returns lies to the eyes of the deceiver. The four walls of the skull stifle the pain making it heavier. The lips sewed so the yells don’t go out. Just the heartbeats forcing you to go deeper and deeper.

AZALBERRITAN / UNDER A NEW SKIN (2004)

1. Gisa (So)
Instrumental.

2. Suharriak (Stones of fire) Includes words from a poem by Mordechai Vanunu
The light is murdered in the west. Only the void left behind. What was. What was done. All the secrets buried in the grass. All the silence buried in the rain. And now, time. And now, oblivion. Hatred is a golden child. When everything is covered in red. Eyes burnt in the light. When the screw is part of the machine. Serpents flying.

3. Berriro (Once again)
A vast emptiness will possess me. Before my own shadow. By the time I realise. What’s happening. I’m far away. Like a fugitive. An abandoned pile of shit. As usual. I’ll watch my shadow once again while feeling strange movements. And when I get close to you, I won’t understand anything.

4. Yonki (Junkie)
Maybe I’ll be able to fly in dreams. I’m ready for this long flight. Everything is like an avalanche falling on me. Arms wide open, veins open in order to fly. Maybe everything is possible in dreams. Maybe everything is possible in dreams.

5. No words for green / Blues.
Instrumental.

6. Irrika (Pulse) Lyrics by Josetxo Anitua, based on the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.
I’ve dived into the silence until my inner sound flourished.
The song that mixes the beating of the echo of memories and the pulse of blood.
I can hear the pulse of blood joining the pulse of living beings: men, mammals, fish, birds, the reptiles we were in our mother’s womb, insects and worms in the dry land, all the forgotten ones in the genetic memory shouting with one voice in this deaf pulse that blood brings silently.
January’s southern wind brings me fragments of voices of my generation.
Some died in dreams, in drugs, in terrible diseases, pushed aside among rumours. Others lost their mind, unable to satisfy silent demands.
Some of us decided not to breed. Those who did it, walk through the narrow spiral of red figures, trying to hide from their children’s eyes what happened to the world we inherited.
Everyone feeding the great cement and aluminium sphinx that Allen Ginsberg called Moloch.
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Cans of toxic waste and unobtainable money!
Serious-looking children punished under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men lost in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Moloch the nightmare! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch!
Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the Congress of Sorrows!
Moloch, whose buildings are judgements! Moloch, the vast stone of war! Moloch, the stunned governments!
Moloch, whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch, whose blood is running money! Moloch, whose fingers are ten armies!
Moloch, whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch, whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch, whose eyes are a thousand black windows! Moloch, whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like an endless god!
Moloch, whose love is oil and stone! Moloch, whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch, in whom I sit! Moloch, in whom I dream angels! Crazy! In Moloch! Cock sucking! In Moloch! Lacklove and manless! In Moloch!
Moloch, who entered my soul early! Moloch, in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch, who frightened me out of my natural peace!
Moloch, whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! Invisible suburbs! Blind capitals! Demonic industries! Spectral nations! Invincible madhouses! Granite cocks! Monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to heaven! Pavements, tress, street lamps and semi-detached houses, lifting the cities to the commercial heaven, the only one that really exists.
Visions! Omens! Religions! The whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Abysses! Over the river! Flips and crucifixions! Gone down the flood!
Highs! Epiphanies! Despair! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides!
New loves! Mad generation! Down on the rocks of time!
The pulse of blood joining the pulse of living beings: men, mammals, fish, birds, the reptiles we were in our mother’s womb, insects and worms in the dry land, all the forgotten ones in the genetic memory shouting with one voice in this deaf pulse that grows more and more, and what was pulse is now outcry.

7. Esnatze berriak (New awakenings)
We’ll be serpents under a new skin. Serpents changing. We’ll be new breath. In lands where dreams are born. Eyes open, observant. We’ll be new light of deep-rooted sun. Bringing out what’s hidden.

8. Urre manifestum (Golden manifesto)
Instrumental.

(thanks to Òscar Ruiz Fort by translations)