As the landscape folds away
A Crumpsall Riddle for another day
Slumber heads beneath the arch
Velvet co-ordinates in the dark
A life that’s lived in short sweet gasps
Between the benches of municipal parks
A life that slips between the sheets
The foolscap pages of empty streets
The red knight begins
Upstaged by the dusky harlequin
Checkmate as the pawn starts to sing
Enraged by the bishop’s diamond ring
That illuminates a corner of the wing
Where the queen parades
Her capture of the king
As the landscape folds away
A Crumpsall Riddle for another day
Slumber heads beneath the arch
Velvet co-ordinates in the dark
Last year I bought a keyboard called the Arturia Microfreak which has quite a nice arpeggiator, which when coupled with a delay line can produce proggy sequences with an early Genesis feel to them.
Growing up in the 1970s Genesis represented everything wrong with music, too much instrumental noodling, ridiculous lyrics about mythical figures not to mention theatrical costumes. All in all there seemed very little relation to everyday life (these perceived negatives were for many of course the attraction). If punk had never happened maybe I would still feel the same, but it did and gradually I have begun to appreciate the often wistful English pastoralism of Gabriel era Genesis.
Thus I decided to go with the proggy sequence adding a first vocal line - “As the landscape folds away” drawing on the idea of a foldable topography. This owes something to an episode of Father Ted in which Ted tells Bishop Brennan that he must stay the night as owing to the rain “the roads have been taken in”, and a line from the Battered Ornaments “When the crosswords and the safety-pins/Solve themselves and close for the night”. This is that magic hour when shopkeepers take in their wares and pull down the shutters, school kids dawdle home and teas are prepared. In this case our sleepy characters retreat to (underneath) the arch to perform “velvet co-ordiantes in the dark”. The verse goes on detailing a semi marginal existence in and around a municipal park again somewhat early Gabriel in origin – see “Social Security took care of this lad” and
"Isn't it time that he was out on his own?"
Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds, cuckoo to you
As mentioned a lyrical tendency in Genesis was to Tolkien and 70s sci-fi inspired tales of mythical movements of Kings and clans often using the chess board as a metaphor. I took this as a ground for the second verse projecting a sequence of plays that starts with the Red Knight and ends with the “capture of the King”.
Musically this part required umpteen overdubs (bass, three lines of percussion, strings, flutes, organ) to give it some presence, even then it wasn’t until a somewhat ridiculous fuzz guitar was added that it seemed to work.
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