[INTRO] [Slow dusty breakbeat] [Deep dub bass entering gradually] [Very distant guitar harmonics] [Roland 303 barely audible] [Low-pass filter slowly opening] [Spoken vocal, intimate and detached] There’s a man on the corner selling maps to places that don’t exist He says the roads are getting longer but nobody’s getting anywhere. [VERSE 1] I met him underneath the railway where the pigeons owned the sky He had a pocket full of batteries and a blue light in his eye He said, “Son, I’ve seen tomorrow and it wasn’t much to see There were cameras in the windows and the windows watching me” A bus rolled past like thunder with advertisements for sleep While a woman with a plastic crown was counting coins beside her feet And somewhere down the alley a radio began to hiss Playing songs from twenty years ago about a world we somehow missed [INSTRUMENTAL] [303 enters softly] [Short squelch pattern] [Dub delay on snare] [Muted guitar skank] [Sub-bass swells] [303 filter opens and closes between phrases] [CHORUS] Static in the rain Static in the rain Everybody’s talking but nobody says a name Static in the rain Running through the wires We built ourselves a city then forgot what we desired [VERSE 2] There’s a preacher on the pavement with a television face He tells the people salvation is available by post And the children keep on scrolling through a thousand little dreams While the old men sell the future from their offices of screens I saw a girl beside the station drawing circles in the dust She said, “Everything is temporary even things we think we trust” Then she disappeared at midnight like a message never sent Leaving nothing but a question and a fifty-cent lament [CHORUS] Static in the rain Static in the rain Everybody’s talking but nobody says a name Static in the rain Running through the wires We built ourselves a city then forgot what we desired [BRIDGE] [Beat drops almost completely] [Deep dub echo] [303 reduced to distant pulses] [Spoken vocal] Maybe the city’s not broken. Maybe it was built this way. Maybe the noise is the message. Maybe we’re just standing too close to the radio. [303 SOLO] [TB-303 becomes prominent] [Wobbly resonance] [Acid squelch and sliding notes] [Dub delay throws] [Broken beat gradually rebuilds] [Filtered vocal fragments buried in the mix] [VERSE 3] By the morning I was walking past the towers made of glass Every face reflected twice as the strangers hurried past There was smoke above the rooftops and a siren down below And a man selling umbrellas said, “You don’t need one anymore” I asked him where the river went He pointed at the road Said, “They buried it beneath us when the traffic overflowed” So I followed all the cables to a room beneath the town Where a thousand little machines were keeping everybody down [FINAL CHORUS] Static in the rain Static in the rain Everybody’s talking but nobody says a name Static in the rain Running through the wires We built ourselves a city from forgotten old desires Static in the rain Hear it underneath A little human heartbeat buried underneath the beat [OUTRO] [Beat slowly strips away] [Dub bass remains] [303 continues with increasingly distant echoes] [Vinyl crackle] [Spoken vocal] The man with the batteries was gone when I came back. Only his map remained. There was one road on it. It led straight through the middle of everything. [303 echoes into silence]
