Tag: Anemone

The Woolly Bushmen may look young, but they sound like a rusted IROC Camaro with a busted manifold roaring out of the 7-11 parking lot.

There wasn’t enough room on the narrow boat for the botanist to take out a handkerchief and wipe their brow. The square head vessel, slicing through the water on its way to the Phong Dien Floating Market, looked to be laden with mangos, but that was a ruse. The pyramids that piled the boat only a had a skin a single mango deep. Underneath were piles of something with about the same density as mangos, but much much more valuable. The captain twisted the knob on the cabin radio on hearing some narcopolka, the device’s limited capacity making the sound increase not in volume, only in distortion. The sun sparkled off the water, a thousand heat lasers evading the shade thrown by the wide straw hats they wore.

The earth rumbled into an appropriate angle of repose as the bucket wheel ground to a halt. On the ground, the sapper raised an arm to signal to the operator, sitting high above in an air-conditioned cab as disproportionately tiny as a brontosaurus brain. The sounds of Taiwanese ragtime could be heard on the earpiece now that the excavator had stopped digging into the hard Upper Peninsula soil. This machine was capable of extracting tons of copper ore in a single hour, but now it was digging for something far more valuable.

The pilot felt the glider’s control surfaces bite into the updraft. The craft smoothly pitched up and right as the surreal Eastern Washington terrain unfolded beneath them. The plucky strains of a Bolivian polka filled the small cockpit, the whistling of the wind no true competition. Facing backward, the specialist peered at the techmapper. Somewhere below, there was something messing with the surveillance satellite and downing any powered aircraft that dared approach. Up ahead, the clouds were bunched up in a way any seasoned traveler of the skies could tell was just. not. right.

The mechanical harvestman towered over the fig grove, its spindly arms tucked underneath as it towered over the fruit trees. The cryptobotanist aimed the infrared reader at the edge of the cultivated land, where the real Bhutan took over, hoping for even a quick glimpse. The landscape gave nothing in return. The operator’s headphones leaked the sound of some Turkish reggae, bounced from a satellite to overcome the foreboding mountains that ringed the valley. They both had patience to spare. The beast they were seeking had only one food source, located right here, and everyone’s gotta eat.

Heavenly melodies, luscious harmonies, over-chorused guitar jangles, and a sunny sparkling delivery make this suitable for ‘90s 4AD fans.