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Alien Home

by Tom Milsom

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Sven B. Schreiber (sbs)
Sven B. Schreiber (sbs) thumbnail
Sven B. Schreiber (sbs) Frankly, I go for bedroom recordings. Why... well, in such a setting with (usually) limited technical resources, the only way out is real good songwriting! And Tom Milsom aka "Gemini Eye" evidently has plenty of the required talent. "Alien Home" is a fun album with great lyrics and clever, ever-surprising song ideas, demonstrating that even a most tasty meal doesn't need more than simple ingredients. More favorite tracks besides "Home": "Charlie's Birthday Song", "A Little Irony", and "West Street". Favorite track: Home.
Mike Cheese
Mike Cheese thumbnail
Mike Cheese I heard 'A Little Irony' on Welcome to Nightvale, an odd, but entertaining podcast. It just got in my head. I listened to it on youtube a bunch, then downloaded an mp3 into iTunes. I still went back and back to it, so I decided I'd just buy the darn thing if I liked it so much, and support the indie artist! As I listened more on Bandcamp, I found that I liked more than just that one song, so I picked the whole album up. Favorite track: A Little Irony.
Álvaro
Álvaro thumbnail
Álvaro There's something about this album that gets me every time. So happy. Favorite track: Home.
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1.
Home 03:17
I don't know how to talk to you All of the things I've put you through All of the wonderful things we've seen 'til now Will take us to right where we started out somehow And it's alright After all the nightmare battles we've endured And I'd like After all of this for you to be assured When you're tired of the gruelling realm we roam It's time for us to go home Once we were like a team of two You loved the things I made for you It would feed you, sustain you and give you a headstart And slowly you've starved and we've climbed ourselves apart But we'll be fine If we take the path that everybody takes We'll be fine We can learn from all the previous mistakes I'm just glad I'm not doing this alone And you'll always be here to take me home Don't worry about me I'll be fine Let me go out of sight, it's ok I'll call back, call you up, Let you know if there's a way But if you'd rather I didn't phone Well that's ok I'll see you when I get home.
2.
I wanna go outside and write your name In sunlight on the backs of both my eyes I hope you're not surprised When I use my scarred retinas to stare your scrawled and cursive name onto the dusty surfaces of things I used to love before you It's hard but what can I do And then I count the days before Allowing both my retinas to heal So I can see your face in perfect clarity Oh I will see Your face in front of me And then behind my eyelids I'm with you Imagining the things we're gonna do In phosphorescent brown and black and blue In fine and blinding summer light with you I didn't even want to know your name Until the sunlight sparkled in your eyes It took me by surprise And suddenly the paradigm Of thinking I was fine Was shifted into realising that I needed you all of the time And when I close my eyelids I'm with you Imagining the things we're gonna do In phosphorescent brown and black and blue In fine and blinding summer light with you
3.
4.
5.
Kelvinbridge 02:12
I don't know what's going on Please remind me Everything that has gone wrong Is behind me You put things down on the floor Nothing for me I look up just like before And you ignore me I don't know what's going on Please remind me All the good times take so long But they will find me
6.
Dream Gate 01:02
7.
What did you do To get some Job like that what Did you do Did you sleep with the Branch manager What did you do Did you try Your very best To be the best one you could be Did you try your very best Hand in a nicely justified CV What did yo do To get that job What did you do to get the job that you wanted You're spending evenings looking after cats And i'm alone with creepy looking rats What did you do what did you do Did you suck a dick or two What did you do what did you do Did you try real hard to do your best Cause I Wanted that And now I'm cleaning up after rats What did you do what did you do I wish that I was you
8.
Nobody asked me to play at VidCon this year Nobody wanted me on their panel at all Last year I played some songs and went away And this year it seems as though they don't want me anyway Nobody asked me to play At VidCon this year They say 'we don't want you' And I cry a single tear Gonna do the secret panel And everyone can see That you're all VIP And I'm just Industry And Vondell's even worse, cause he's only Community At VidCon this year Nobody wanted to ask me to do things At VidCon this year But all of the fans want me to do things Ask me to sign things i'll do it happily Ask me to play, and that'd be even better please nobody asked me to be on a panel even though i know lots of things about panels That's what panels are right You just sit and talk about panels Panels on things like Wood panels Floor panels Secret panels No-one wants me No-one wants me at all No-one wants me to sing in that hall They only want people like Shane Dawson Even though I draw a crowd when I'm doing stuff anyway Nobody asked me Nobody asked me Though I'll do stuff anyway Nobody at VidCon Nobody at VidCon wanted me to play
9.
Time should stop moving And never go beyond today If we could find a way to stop The world would be okay If I'd thought about it sooner It wouldn't have been downhill But I'll make the best of what I've got While I've got it still Do you wanna know A little irony about me I don't know if I should say This little irony about me But it's funny cause my heart has started Beating It never has before today It must be something in the way She looks at me She started screaming Before I made the earth stand still Of all the people I could kill It had to be Do you wanna know A little irony about me I don't know if I should say This little irony about me But it's funny because love was just a Feeling Irrelevant before today But now I've gotta find a way To make her real Freezing Was just for me to get away But now I need to learn to stay And make her real When all the world around me Moved so unpredictably A moment never lasted long enough For me to see the reason why Love never came to me It moves unscientifically But now you're trapped and I can Find a reason now to ask you one more time Do you wanna know A little irony about me I don't know if I should say This little irony about me But you'll move me more forever Than you ever could before today.
10.
A Reminder 02:01
11.
West Street 03:39
One hundred and fifty thousand voices Saying the same thing every day One hundred and fifty thousand pairs of shoes Wearing away Shuffling round beneath the surface A thousand people standing still I can devour them with my edifice Moving at will So much to do when you're a servant So much to give when you're a slave
12.
This Shore 02:06
This shore has rhythm. A fractal beat On surf and sand. A wave. A wave. The ding ding, the hum, This hiss and smoke from Manhattan’s mouth is loud But young. It will pass. Shore is forever. A wave. A wave. A wave in wet paint on metal, Wet orange reflections, captured light set forever. Wet paint is like brick in this city. The sky is made of air, The doors are made of wood, And the heads are made of paint. East river water is made of paint. It’s wet and every night the light from its twin in concrete waves, Waves, shows it colour and contour and form And lets it play; a thick sodium slug That sticks to the sides, shimmering. This land has deep vibrations, Anger and strong footsteps, rumblings And penetrations and this Shore-to-shore shake that keeps it Up. Wet, dry, hot, cold, down, It’s a furious nightlight; Ding, awash in a river Going east to an island and floating Easily on the wind like a gull; Ding, going east to the ocean and A gulp, a wash, a river of spit And an ocean of shouting flotsam. Paint this city black. Paint this city black. Shout amongst this hum, this hiss And Manhattan’s smoke and mouth your words So every silent phoneme is a subway tunnel! Ding, a wash, a gulp, an ocean, a river. Ding, strong penetrations, footsteps, vibrations. Ding, Thick colour, concrete, night and paint, Ding, the heads, the doors, the sky is wet. The city sleeps beneath a pillowed sky And suffocated hum and hiss and smoke Can not disturb a wave. A wave. This city sleeps surrounded by the shore.
13.
Baltimore 03:48
Don't nobody care about my head And it hurts like it never used to do before
14.
Ibrox 05:33
15.
Skin 04:37
It was the day after my second album Painfully Mainstream was finally released. I stepped out of the shower, my fingers corrugated by the water, and saw a little white flap of skin at the tip of my thumb. I dried myself off with the damp blue towel from the floor all the while looking at this flap. It was big, a hole in my hand that wouldn’t close up on its own, made of a dead layer of myself that it was time to remove. I pulled at the flap and watched in horror as it slid the skin off my thumb whole, like a sausage casing. It hung, limp, while I instinctively tried to back away from it, but of course, it was attached to my hand and so what else could I do but keep pulling, like a glove now, all five of my fingers detached from the translucent, alien thing that my body was birthing from its surface. As it began to separate from my elbow, I felt it tear at the top of my neck. I was almost sick, but I knew I couldn’t stop pulling, so, retching and terrified, I gave tug after tentative tug until the skin slid over my shoulder and I pulled my whole arm free. I looked at the virgin limb that I’d uncovered. It was grey, like a rainy day, and my veins were pulsing at my wrist in ways I’d never seen before. All my moles had gone, as well as all the hair. It was almost like a newborn, except where babies’ arms are full of insulating fat and untrained muscle and big unthinking innocent pre-proprioceptory movements, mine was poised and predatory, making tiny, wise adjustments to its tendons as I turned it and clasped it. I pulled the rest of my torso free and stepped out of the skin, leaving it limp and puddled on the floor. My new body was bone dry, and lightweight. I felt spry after shedding a whole dead layer, and sensitive to the touch. I felt my new body for the first time. When my new skin was a week old, I sat at my piano to try starting something fresh. I was keen to see how my new body would work this out, but instead of rising to the occasion, my slimmer, streamlined fingers were skittery on the keys, ten miniature bambis on eighty-seven frozen lakes. The guitar was no better. The strings sliced my un-calloused tips and made them bleed. I was tired. Laughing made my new cheeks ache, and crying made them rashy. A week went by with no improvement and in desperation, I turned to my wardrobe. When I’d first removed the skin, I hadn’t known if it was to be of any use ever again but clever old me had had the foresight to keep it for a couple of months, just in case, and so there, airing on a hanger, were the fingers that had made all my chords before, the face that had felt all my tears before, the feet and shoulders and chest that had for nineteen years been my old translucent home. I reluctantly tugged it on. It was cold against my new skin, and heavy. It didn’t fit as tightly as it used to, and would bunch and sag, but it was fine around the fingers, and fine around the face. For a while, I was me again. Weeks passed. I wrote more songs that could have sat side-by-side with the pieces that populated Painfully Mainstream. I considered re-releasing it as a double album. Then one day, I started to deteriorate. Holes were appearing in my skin suit, first at the pits where it would disintegrate, and then around my nipples and on my neck, tiny holes at first that would grow larger and more noticeable with the wear of every passing day. It took two weeks for the suit to be in tatters, but I steadfastly refused to take it off. The more it fell apart, the more comfortable it became. The more it felt like the real me. It was a month before I noticed. With every passing day, my skin suit had been getting tighter and more contoured, and I relaxed into it, when any dermatologist could have told me that the last of the suit had slid away and what I was wearing now was my own skin, permanently darkened by the oils of the suit and gradually taught how to survive the everyday by the ever thinning layers of protection I had given it. It was different now though. My new fingers had worked their way around what the skin had taught them, and held my knife and fork in an interesting way. They had a new relationship with the keys on my piano, half remembering the fond familiarity the old skin had taught them, and half remembering with care and consideration the uncoordinated confusion of their first try. My mouth started formulating words in a way my old ears had never heard, but the new ones were ready and able to drink them in and add them to the mix. I had a new way of working, and it would take me a year to become accustomed to it. It was the day after I finally released Explorers 6. Everyone was happy, and I lay back on my bed, satisfied and idly toying with a little white flap of skin on the end of my thumb.
16.
Victoria 00:33
17.
Alien 03:43
There is an alien in me, It lives below my surface I try to cut it out sometimes It doesn't know what hurt is And I don't know what to do It gets too much to mention A parasite upon my thoughts It's eating my attention There is an alien in me I'm crying when it's feeding It wriggles underneath my skin And I can feel it breeding Its veins are my veins and we share A soul, a spine, a psyche It doesn't seem to know I'm there It carries on despite me I live outside an alien I'm carried on its body Sometimes I feel its muscles ache, Sometimes it does things for me Communicates when I'm asleep A psychedelic warning Leaves little notes for me in dreams And stains my mind for morning

about

Alien Home is a collection of songs recorded in my bedroom from 2011-2012, and i hope u like them

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released July 13, 2012

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Tom Milsom London

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