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about

This song is a little naughty. It began life as a song about the antikythera mechanism but as so many things do, eventually ended up about sex.

More specifically, it’s about a love affair that has been corrupted by toys, cogs and machinery, to the point where genuine human contact seems impossible.

Of course, such despairing and bleak lyrics have to be set to a jaunty tune.

The song was written for February Album Writing Month, and began as a couple of largely wordless improvisations before being hacked into shape for the album.

lyrics

This mechanism it’s driving us apart,
It shines a prism on the kind of love we share
This mechanism is making passion spoil
It tastes of something the cloying tang of wine and oil
Our love relies on clockwork
The careful use of gears and wheel

This mechanism it isn’t how we feel

You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mecanism isn’t you or me

The games we’re playing type writers for our hearts
The rules and rhythms
The limits of a steam powered love
It started somewhere lighter
Somehow we got lost somewhre
This mechanism won’t get us anywhere

You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mechanism isn’t you or me

Oil is the wine
Roses in the chains
Burning a pilot light
Isn’t carrying a flame

You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mechanism isn’t you or me

credits

from Spinning The Compass (2016 remaster), released February 3, 2016

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all rights reserved

tags

about

Tom Slatter London

A latter-day Victorian street-theatre barker with a guitar promising tales of mystery, imagination, ‘orrible murders and bloody great waving tentacles’ is how Tom Slatter has been described. Since 2010 he has been scaring audiences with six albums and numerous EPs of storytelling songs. ... more

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