The Beast of Normal-Beings is a monster that dwells in many homes and hearts, but this one is a collaboration between poet, painter and musician Dave Normal and the interdisciplinary Snake-Beings. The Beast of Normal-Beings is a Frankenstein mutation of our shared interests and influences, music, poetry, a love of improvisation and, yeah, making stuff up and recording it. We started the project recording ‘Clutching’, one of Dave’s solo songs: making a music video within the same intensive 24 hours time period when SnakeBeings was let out of his 7 day isolation quarantine at the end of the covid era. The main selection of the tracks comes from the album ‘Maybe’ which we wrote and recorded together, notably ‘The Eulogy’ and ‘Jelly’ which are a mish-mash of lyrics from the notebooks of the duo, assembled over a few sessions and re-builds. In the mish-mash of creating we smelt the stench of Elon’s ‘Musk’ and the imagined bondage sessions of Air B’n’Ders wearing half-head metallic foil caps, piano therapy in empty blue skies and endless love, objects and hoarders, and… those mysterious ‘stains on the carpet which will never come out’.... Expressing the uncertainty of everyday existence, or at least the flux of our constantly shifting thoughts and images, we sat and watched helplessly as the beast hobbled itself together from the hours spent recording late at night as a, sometimes ironic, ‘synthesiser duo’: Roland JD-Xi & Korg ModWave. We were writing some lyrics in the weeks before and recorded these in Dave's B’n’D caravan in the last days before SnakeBeings migrated to Taiwan. Calling on the beast we performed a massive culling of tracks until we reached the present 16 tracks. These 16, with the two musicians (18: see below) became a “Beast of” mostly recorded July 2022 - January 2023 @ Glen Massey & Waitakeri on the trusty (and cheap) R8 Zoom multitrack recorder.

Solo tracks by Normal include: ‘Clutching’, ‘Dog’s Life and ‘We held hands’. There's also parts of ‘The Situation’ mashed together by Dave from the Normal-Beings ‘Kraftwerk jam’ and recordings of his neighbour’s rants between medication. Dog’s life was inspired by Dave’s alter ego as ‘Wiggy Pop’ and the madman's dog barking next door. Solo tracks from the Beings include: ‘Spy Mash’ from Sufi Breakfast LP, recorded in Fiji; ‘Crypto falling’ from Animist Blockchain LP and ‘Titirangi Teslas’ inspired by observations on the Waitakeri highstreet: an eco-community infested by wealthy real-estate-investors driving expensive electric sports cars and occupying a costly ‘high-moral ground’ built on the ghosts of a once-was-neighbourhood-spirit.

The lyrics for ‘Comfortable Cicadas’ came scrambled and re-ordered by Dave from a book of New Zealand poetry, flipping pages and adapting lines. Sadly the book became lost before we could remember who the authors were. We hope they don’t mind, our cover-perversions of your poems are intended as a tribute to the creativity of original work: proof that not all NZ poetry is about rehashing the lyrics of Elvis. Likewise, or, on the other hand, ‘Emptiness’ is a sort-of-cover of David Tibet’s Current 93 song, at least the parts we managed from memory. We hope he doesn’t mind, or puts some spell on us. As a poor excuse, I met David Tibet in a London bookshop, back in the 90’s, whilst he was looking for second-hand Alister Crowley first editions and I forgot to ask him. A random encounter which became manifest 30 years later with the ‘Beast of’.

The dog on the cover is from a temple in Taiwan called: Black Hound of Eighteen Lords(十八王宮忠犬) You can find more info from ‘The Affective Dimensions of Veronique Kwak’ website below. V. says: “There is a dark temple in the north-coast Taiwan named the Temple of Eighteen Lords, which features statutes of black hounds in its setting. Dark temples, in the context of Sinophone cultures, refer to places that house ghosts who have elevated their status for doing good for the mankind, and they are frequented by gamblers, venture capitalists and prostitutes who wish for instant success.”
ladyofwhims.wordpress.com

Being a ‘Beast of’ we put some of our older unreleased songs from a portable studio session in a Fiat Uno parked around various Mormon churches and empty fields around Waikato. We didn’t include the noisier stuff, such as ‘suoermarket’ inspired by our mutual teenage infatuation with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle. Listeners feel free to find this on www.circuit47.com.

Special thanks to: Erin Normal, Bevin Yeatman and the people of both New Zealand and Taiwan. Beast Distro:
New Zealand: suterd@ymail.com Europe & Asia: snakebeings@gmail.com