From 7ddbb5ea17258aeae92b9bb8d7a3491f23c963a9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: St33v Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:09:46 +1100 Subject: add Eli Mercer The Message --- robots.txt | 5 + st33vRecords/drMorbius/artist.eno | 3 +- st33vRecords/drMorbius/nextex/release.eno | 4 +- st33vRecords/eli/artist.eno | 15 ++- st33vRecords/eli/eli.jpg | Bin 0 -> 263099 bytes st33vRecords/eli/message/manifesto/track.eno | 32 ++++++ .../eli/message/mediumisme/lyrics-MediumisMe.txt | 40 +++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/track.eno | 45 ++++++++ .../eli/message/message/lyrics-message.txt | 115 ++++++++++++++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/message/track.eno | 120 +++++++++++++++++++++ .../eli/message/muscular/lyrics-muscular.txt | 91 ++++++++++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/track.eno | 96 +++++++++++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/release.eno | 69 ++++++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/sistine-square.jpg | Bin 0 -> 558978 bytes .../eli/message/slowtrain/lyrics-SlowTrain.txt | 100 +++++++++++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/track.eno | 105 ++++++++++++++++++ .../eli/message/sun/lyrics-copystrikeSun.txt | 50 +++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/track.eno | 55 ++++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/lyrics-Mentinya.txt | 81 ++++++++++++++ st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/track.eno | 86 +++++++++++++++ 20 files changed, 1106 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) create mode 100644 robots.txt create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/eli.jpg create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/manifesto/track.eno create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/lyrics-MediumisMe.txt create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/track.eno create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/message/lyrics-message.txt create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/message/track.eno create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/lyrics-muscular.txt create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/track.eno create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/release.eno create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/sistine-square.jpg create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/lyrics-SlowTrain.txt create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/track.eno create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/lyrics-copystrikeSun.txt create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/track.eno create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/lyrics-Mentinya.txt create mode 100644 st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/track.eno diff --git a/robots.txt b/robots.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a021c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/robots.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +User-agent: * +Allow: / + +Sitemap: https://st33v.com/sitemap.xml + diff --git a/st33vRecords/drMorbius/artist.eno b/st33vRecords/drMorbius/artist.eno index f12c20e..f9db82c 100644 --- a/st33vRecords/drMorbius/artist.eno +++ b/st33vRecords/drMorbius/artist.eno @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -name: Dr Morbius of Altair IV +name: Dr Morbius at Altair IV permalink: drmorbius link: @@ -9,6 +9,5 @@ link: label = Website url = https://www.youtube.com/@morbiusAtAltairIV -url = https://www.youtube.com/@St33v33 diff --git a/st33vRecords/drMorbius/nextex/release.eno b/st33vRecords/drMorbius/nextex/release.eno index 42953c3..c844832 100644 --- a/st33vRecords/drMorbius/nextex/release.eno +++ b/st33vRecords/drMorbius/nextex/release.eno @@ -18,9 +18,7 @@ description = A cursor blinks on a terminal screen at dusk in a rainy field, wit file = nextexCover.jpg -- synopsis -#### Abstract - -This release constitutes a batch transmission of ten sonic specimens obtained from a persistent, partially understood Krell-derived patch ecology. I did not “compose” these works in the conventional Terran sense. I initiated observation, opened the gain structure, and allowed the system to demonstrate its own affordances. The Numerically Exquisite Temporal Extrapolator (NExTEx) was employed as both courier and contaminant: it conveys the album to Terra while introducing time-skew, semantic drift, and characteristic compression artifacts. These defects are not incidental. They are the medium asserting itself. +This is a batch transmission of ten sonic specimens obtained from a partially understood component of the Krell Machine, which I have dubbed, 'Numerically Exquisite Temporal Extrapolator', which emits 'meaning' rather than 'information', faster than light. -- synopsis -- more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/artist.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/artist.eno index ae7552a..d96b8dc 100644 --- a/st33vRecords/eli/artist.eno +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/artist.eno @@ -5,7 +5,20 @@ link: label = Eli Mercer url = http://st33v.com +image: +description = A portrait of Eli Mercer looking directly into the camera. He wears his trademark denim jacket and one of his favorite Rock and Roll T-shirts. +file = eli.jpg + + -- more -Eli Mercer is a figment of your imagination + +Eli Mercer is a metamodern songwriter working in the long shadow of sincerity, armed with melody, irony, and a quiet refusal to choose between hope and critique. His songs move like a pendulum between earnest confession and self-aware distance, never settling, never collapsing into parody. If postmodernism taught us to doubt, Mercer is interested in what remains worth saying *after* the doubt has done its work. + +Emerging from a period of prolific, exploratory writing, Mercer’s early material caught the attention of **Rick Beato**, who briefly championed his work for its structural clarity and melodic instinct. That moment of discovery was formative but fleeting. Mercer ultimately parted ways with Beato, amicably but decisively, choosing to step away from the gravitational pull of validation and toward a more idiosyncratic, self-authored path. + +Since then, Mercer’s output has become more conceptually unified and emotionally resilient. His songs often interrogate ambition, cultural exhaustion, technological mediation, and the stubborn persistence of the individual voice. There is craft here, but no polish for its own sake; philosophy, but no retreat into abstraction. Mercer writes as someone still willing to stand behind a song, even while questioning why songs matter at all. + +Eli Mercer’s work belongs to that narrow, necessary space where belief is provisional, meaning is negotiated in real time, and music is still allowed to be a human act. + -- more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/eli.jpg b/st33vRecords/eli/eli.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b966ab Binary files /dev/null and b/st33vRecords/eli/eli.jpg differ diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/manifesto/track.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/manifesto/track.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41a9a7c --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/manifesto/track.eno @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ + +-- synopsis +The lyrics sung in this are taken _verbatim_ from The Metamodernist Manifesto, published by Luke Turner in 2011, Using the term metamodernism employed by Vermeulen & van den Akker in Notes on metamodernism, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Volume 2, 2010 + +-- synopsis + +link: +label = Metamodernist Manifesto +url = https://www.metamodernism.org/ + +more_label: Lyrics + +-- more + +1. +We recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world. +2. +We must liberate ourselves from the inertia resulting from a century of modernist ideological naivety and the cynical insincerity of its antonymous bastard child. +3. +Movement shall henceforth be enabled by way of an oscillation between positions, with diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities of a colossal electric machine, propelling the world into action. +4. +We acknowledge the limitations inherent to all movement and experience, and the futility of any attempt to transcend the boundaries set forth therein. The essential incompleteness of a system should necessitate an adherence, not in order to achieve a given end or be slaves to its course, but rather perchance to glimpse by proxy some hidden exteriority. Existence is enriched if we set about our task as if those limits might be exceeded, for such action unfolds the world. +5. +All things are caught within the irrevocable slide towards a state of maximum entropic dissemblance. Artistic creation is contingent upon the origination or revelation of difference therein. Affect at its zenith is the unmediated experience of difference in itself. It must be art’s role to explore the promise of its own paradoxical ambition by coaxing excess towards presence. +6. +The present is a symptom of the twin birth of immediacy and obsolescence. Today, we are nostalgists as much as we are futurists. The new technology enables the simultaneous experience and enactment of events from a multiplicity of positions. Far from signalling its demise, these emergent networks facilitate the democratisation of history, illuminating the forking paths along which its grand narratives may navigate the here and now. +7. +Just as science strives for poetic elegance, artists might assume a quest for truth. All information is grounds for knowledge, whether empirical or aphoristic, no matter its truth-value. We should embrace the scientific-poetic synthesis and informed naivety of a magical realism. Error breeds sense. +8. +We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus, metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and elusive horizons. We must go forth and oscillate! + +-- more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/lyrics-MediumisMe.txt b/st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/lyrics-MediumisMe.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0548ffb --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/lyrics-MediumisMe.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +I gained my D.N.A. from a man +Who watched the light bend thought +He said the tool reshapes the hand +Before the hand knows what it’s taught + +He spoke in riddles, ads and jokes +With scripture in his grin +He knew the world would fold itself +Around the nerves we’re wiring in + +I asked which way was I facing +In whose voice should I sing? + +He said I could rewire my head +I dropped out, turned on +So you could tune in + + +I am the evidence +Where sound becomes belief +Where Better Minds Howl with Elegance +But fifteen minutes is far too brief + +I step past the first rule without shame +The discourse oscillates +And we lay claim to Charlemagne +Let's not teach the World to Litigate + +I don’t claim blood +I claim the stance +The method, not the name +If the medium shaped the message +Then I’m shaped inside the frame + +No disguise +No plea +No alibi + +The medium... +...Is me \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/track.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/track.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e29bbe7 --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/mediumisme/track.eno @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +more_label: Lyrics + +-- more + +I gained my D.N.A. from a man +Who watched the light bend thought +He said the tool reshapes the hand +Before the hand knows what it’s taught + +He spoke in riddles, ads and jokes +With scripture in his grin +He knew the world would fold itself +Around the nerves we’re wiring in + +I asked which way was I facing +In whose voice should I sing? + +He said I could rewire my head +I dropped out, turned on +So you could tune in + + +I am the evidence +Where sound becomes belief +Where Better Minds Howl with Elegance +But fifteen minutes is far too brief + +I step past the first rule without shame +The discourse oscillates +And we lay claim to Charlemagne +Let's not teach the World to Litigate + +I don’t claim blood +I claim the stance +The method, not the name +If the medium shaped the message +Then I’m shaped inside the frame + +No disguise +No plea +No alibi + +The medium... +...Is me +-- more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/message/lyrics-message.txt b/st33vRecords/eli/message/message/lyrics-message.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..286f304 --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/message/lyrics-message.txt @@ -0,0 +1,115 @@ +[INTRO – SPOKEN WORD] +Low light +Late signal +Needle drops + +Mercer on the mezzanine +Listening to ghosts argue with machines + +[VERSE 1] +They say the medium is the message +Say the tool corrupts the hand +Say the song is guilty +If a circuit understands + +They won’t hear the melody +They won’t test the sound +They saw the label on the sleeve +And never turned around + +They want nerve and gland +They want sweat and pain +They want fingerprints +Still warm on the frame + +[PRE-CHORUS] +But the mind’s not an organ +No matter what they say +It’s a story we keep telling +Till the story fades away + +[CHORUS] +The medium is the message +They keep chanting the refrain +But the message is the medium +When meaning breaks the chain + +I’m not hiding in the process +I’m not dodging the flame +If the song still moves you +Does the maker get the blame? + +[VERSE 2 – SPOKEN / RAP-ADJACENT] +Marshall M, mid-century prophet +Cathode rays and nervous systems +Before irony learned how to weaponize questions + +I saw the best minds of the last generation +Deconstructed into simulacra +Infinite mirrors, no traction + +They called it critique +They called it care +Pulled the floorboards up +And forgot to build stairs + +[PRE-CHORUS 2] +Every truth dissolved +Every centre denied +Until nothing could stand +Without asking who died + +[CHORUS] +The medium is the message +Yeah, I read the signs +But the message is the medium +When it survives the times + +If it breathes, if it pulses +If it holds the line +Then it’s more than provenance +More than blood and spine + +[BRIDGE – JAZZ BREAK / SPOKEN] +Mercer the musician +Mercer the mirror +Muscular metamodernist +Standing nearer + +Not irony poisoned +Not naïveté blind +I oscillate on purpose +I mean what I find + +[VERSE 3] +Call me Meta-M +Call me M and M +I melt the old arguments +And cast them again + +No grand lie, no empty shrug +No sacred cow, no acid fog +I build with the ruins +I don’t worship the smog + +[FINAL CHORUS – EXPANDED] +The medium is the message +That was then, this is now +The message is the medium +When it teaches us how + +To make without apology +To stand without sneer +To say “this matters” +And actually mean it here + +[OUTRO – SPOKEN, FADE] +Trip-hop heartbeat +Mezzanine mind +Human, machine +Keeping time + +Mercer signs off +No disguise +If the song reached you +That’s the evidence. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/message/track.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/message/track.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a71616 --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/message/track.eno @@ -0,0 +1,120 @@ +more_label: Lyrics + +--more + +[INTRO – SPOKEN WORD] +Low light +Late signal +Needle drops + +Mercer on the mezzanine +Listening to ghosts argue with machines + +[VERSE 1] +They say the medium is the message +Say the tool corrupts the hand +Say the song is guilty +If a circuit understands + +They won’t hear the melody +They won’t test the sound +They saw the label on the sleeve +And never turned around + +They want nerve and gland +They want sweat and pain +They want fingerprints +Still warm on the frame + +[PRE-CHORUS] +But the mind’s not an organ +No matter what they say +It’s a story we keep telling +Till the story fades away + +[CHORUS] +The medium is the message +They keep chanting the refrain +But the message is the medium +When meaning breaks the chain + +I’m not hiding in the process +I’m not dodging the flame +If the song still moves you +Does the maker get the blame? + +[VERSE 2 – SPOKEN / RAP-ADJACENT] +Marshall M, mid-century prophet +Cathode rays and nervous systems +Before irony learned how to weaponize questions + +I saw the best minds of the last generation +Deconstructed into simulacra +Infinite mirrors, no traction + +They called it critique +They called it care +Pulled the floorboards up +And forgot to build stairs + +[PRE-CHORUS 2] +Every truth dissolved +Every centre denied +Until nothing could stand +Without asking who died + +[CHORUS] +The medium is the message +Yeah, I read the signs +But the message is the medium +When it survives the times + +If it breathes, if it pulses +If it holds the line +Then it’s more than provenance +More than blood and spine + +[BRIDGE – JAZZ BREAK / SPOKEN] +Mercer the musician +Mercer the mirror +Muscular metamodernist +Standing nearer + +Not irony poisoned +Not naïveté blind +I oscillate on purpose +I mean what I find + +[VERSE 3] +Call me Meta-M +Call me M and M +I melt the old arguments +And cast them again + +No grand lie, no empty shrug +No sacred cow, no acid fog +I build with the ruins +I don’t worship the smog + +[FINAL CHORUS – EXPANDED] +The medium is the message +That was then, this is now +The message is the medium +When it teaches us how + +To make without apology +To stand without sneer +To say “this matters” +And actually mean it here + +[OUTRO – SPOKEN, FADE] +Trip-hop heartbeat +Mezzanine mind +Human, machine +Keeping time + +Mercer signs off +No disguise +If the song reached you +That’s the evidence. +--more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/lyrics-muscular.txt b/st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/lyrics-muscular.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..53ad79a --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/lyrics-muscular.txt @@ -0,0 +1,91 @@ +[INTRO – trip hop, low BPM, dust and vinyl] +Midnight mind, metronome breathing +Neon hum, half-believing +I inherit ruins and blueprints both +Irony cracked but hope still smokes + +Static sermons, soft resistance +Meaning flickers at a distance +I said a name into the dark +It said it back but missed the mark + +[VERSE 1 – trip hop, spoken/half-sung] +They said choose a side, I chose the seam +Between the scream and the marketing dream +Post this, deconstruct that +I tried, I drowned, I floated back + +I don’t sneer, I don’t submit +I lift the doubt and sit with it +Muscle isn’t fists or flags +It’s staying whole when stories drag + +I call myself what I don’t yet know +A working title, moving slow +I face the mirror, step unsure +Faith provisional, spine still pure + +[PRE-CHORUS – beat begins to firm] +Is this strength or just disguise? +Is this clarity or compromise? +I breathe in myth, I breathe out fact +Flex the maybe, don’t collapse + +[CHORUS – trip hop hook] +Which way am I facing and how far shall I step? +Meta as I measure the promises I kept +The message is the medium, the medium’s a mess +I’m strong enough to question, not pretend I guessed + +[BREAK – beat switch, tempo up, 80s drum machine enters] + +[VERSE 2 – proto-rap, crisp, playful] +Now rewind tape, click, clack, boom +Cardboard city, borrowed room +It’s Eli on the corner with a borrowed beat +Got doubt in the head and soul in the feet + +They said “What you stand for?” I said “Stand by” +BD on my shoulder like a trickster spy +Bobby D to Charlemagne +Ancient kings in a power refrain + +History heavy, haloed and worn +Yesterday’s rebels get bronzed by morn +I don’t cancel, I don’t canonize +I metabolize + +[CHORUS – rap cadence] +Which way am I facing and how far shall I step? +No map, no master, no meta-net +The message is the medium, pass it direct +Muscular mind with a human defect + +[VERSE 3 – proto-rap, humorous edge] +You can’t copystrike the sun, check the source code +Free as a chorus, no license mode +Teach the world to sing, yeah fine, okay +But not in perfect harmony — no license key, I say + +I flex uncertainty, modestly bold +Not marble truth, but something that holds +Not irony’s grave, not faith on a leash +Just meaning with muscle, teeth on the speech + +[BRIDGE – half-time, reflective] +Yin in the wiring, yang in the stance +Soft hands, strong back, give doubt a chance +Masculine, feminine, miss the point +I’m building balance at the joint + +[FINAL CHORUS – full energy] +Which way am I facing and how far shall I step? +Far enough to risk it, close enough to check +The message is the medium, the medium is me +Muscular metamodernist — uncertain, standing free + +[OUTRO – beat strips back, echo] +Name’s provisional +Direction pending +Signal alive +Transmission sending \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/track.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/track.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3917dea --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/muscular/track.eno @@ -0,0 +1,96 @@ +more_label: Lyrics + +--more + +[INTRO – trip hop, low BPM, dust and vinyl] +Midnight mind, metronome breathing +Neon hum, half-believing +I inherit ruins and blueprints both +Irony cracked but hope still smokes + +Static sermons, soft resistance +Meaning flickers at a distance +I said a name into the dark +It said it back but missed the mark + +[VERSE 1 – trip hop, spoken/half-sung] +They said choose a side, I chose the seam +Between the scream and the marketing dream +Post this, deconstruct that +I tried, I drowned, I floated back + +I don’t sneer, I don’t submit +I lift the doubt and sit with it +Muscle isn’t fists or flags +It’s staying whole when stories drag + +I call myself what I don’t yet know +A working title, moving slow +I face the mirror, step unsure +Faith provisional, spine still pure + +[PRE-CHORUS – beat begins to firm] +Is this strength or just disguise? +Is this clarity or compromise? +I breathe in myth, I breathe out fact +Flex the maybe, don’t collapse + +[CHORUS – trip hop hook] +Which way am I facing and how far shall I step? +Meta as I measure the promises I kept +The message is the medium, the medium’s a mess +I’m strong enough to question, not pretend I guessed + +[BREAK – beat switch, tempo up, 80s drum machine enters] + +[VERSE 2 – proto-rap, crisp, playful] +Now rewind tape, click, clack, boom +Cardboard city, borrowed room +It’s Eli on the corner with a borrowed beat +Got doubt in the head and soul in the feet + +They said “What you stand for?” I said “Stand by” +BD on my shoulder like a trickster spy +Bobby D to Charlemagne +Ancient kings in a power refrain + +History heavy, haloed and worn +Yesterday’s rebels get bronzed by morn +I don’t cancel, I don’t canonize +I metabolize + +[CHORUS – rap cadence] +Which way am I facing and how far shall I step? +No map, no master, no meta-net +The message is the medium, pass it direct +Muscular mind with a human defect + +[VERSE 3 – proto-rap, humorous edge] +You can’t copystrike the sun, check the source code +Free as a chorus, no license mode +Teach the world to sing, yeah fine, okay +But not in perfect harmony — no license key, I say + +I flex uncertainty, modestly bold +Not marble truth, but something that holds +Not irony’s grave, not faith on a leash +Just meaning with muscle, teeth on the speech + +[BRIDGE – half-time, reflective] +Yin in the wiring, yang in the stance +Soft hands, strong back, give doubt a chance +Masculine, feminine, miss the point +I’m building balance at the joint + +[FINAL CHORUS – full energy] +Which way am I facing and how far shall I step? +Far enough to risk it, close enough to check +The message is the medium, the medium is me +Muscular metamodernist — uncertain, standing free + +[OUTRO – beat strips back, echo] +Name’s provisional +Direction pending +Signal alive +Transmission sending +--more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/release.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/release.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5818c2a --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/release.eno @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +title: The Message (is the Medium) +permalink: message +date: 2026-01-02 + +release_artist: Eli Mercer + +release_downloads: +- flac +- opus +- mp3 + +m3u: disabled +more_label: Liner Notes +track_numbering: arabic-dotted + +cover: +description = A sillouette of Eli Mercer's back as he looks at a representation of Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam' fresco, with the 'God' side replaced by an AI entity with an arm. The words 'The Message' are written on Eli's denim jacket. +file = sistine-square.jpg + +-- synopsis +The Message (is the Medium) follows Eli Mercer’s westward becoming: discovering metamodernism amid song, theory, and motion. Sincere voice meets mediated world, where body, meaning, and music blur, refract, and survive transmission. +-- synopsis + +-- more +Some artists arrive fully formed. Eli Mercer didn’t. He arrived unfinished, notebook heavy, pockets light, tuned to static and possibility. + +Eli first flickered into wider view when **Rick Beato** stumbled across him in West Texas. A college dropout, yes, but not a drop-out mind. More like someone who stepped sideways out of a system mid-sentence. Eli was looking for something he could stand behind without irony, a self that wouldn’t dissolve the moment it was named. His early songs sounded like questions with guitar strings attached. *Who am I speaking as? Who is listening? Who survives the chorus?* + +West Texas is good at producing horizons and silences. Eli learned both. But eventually the road bent westward, and so did he. Route 10 unspooled like a long edit, cutting through dust, doubt, radio stations fading in and out like incomplete theories. The trip mattered. The movement mattered. It was not pilgrimage so much as calibration. + +The Monterey Motel in California wasn’t a destination; it was a pause point. Cheap walls, good echoes. A place where you can hear your own thoughts argue back. Somewhere between the neon vacancy sign and the half-broken air conditioner, Eli encountered metamodernism, not as a thesis but as a feeling. The permission to mean something again while knowing exactly how meaning fails. Sincerity with its fingers crossed, but crossed in public. + +You hear the lineage immediately. **Bob Dylan** looms, not as an influence to be copied but as a reminder that reinvention is not betrayal. Dylan taught Eli that you can change skins without losing your bones. And threading through the whole album is the quiet, insistent hum of **Marshall McLuhan**, whispering that content is never innocent, that every song carries a delivery system that reshapes the singer mid-note. + +> *I sent my truth through copper wire +> It came back changed +> But still on fire* + +*the Message (is the Medium)* is where those ideas stop being footnotes and start being scars. This is not a concept album in the museum sense; it’s a lived-in one. Eli’s voice is bodily and ghostly at once, present and oddly displaced, as if the signal slightly outruns the singer. That tension is the album’s pulse. The corporeal unreality is not a glitch; it’s the point. Flesh filtered through compression algorithms. Breath caught in bandwidth. + +The collaboration with **St33v™**, a self-taught sound engineer, lyricist, and relentless autodidact, is crucial. Where Eli brings the questioning voice, St33v™ brings the listening ear. The production never polishes away the human residue. You hear fingers scrape strings, timing wobble, syllables land just late enough to remind you a body is doing this work. Together they build songs that feel assembled and discovered at the same time. + +> *If the map keeps moving +> Don’t blame the road +> The signal walks +> In the clothes I’m owed* + +There’s no victory lap here. No tidy arrival. Instead, the album holds a steady gaze on becoming, on the courage it takes to speak while knowing the medium will answer back and sometimes contradict you. Eli Mercer isn’t claiming to have found himself. He’s claiming the right to keep looking, out loud, in tune, and on record. + +These songs don’t ask you to agree. They ask you to listen. And then to notice how the listening changes you. + +📡🎶 + +### Credits +Concepts and lyrics by St33v™ +Post-production by St33v™ + +Sincere thanks to Rick Beato, without whom Eli Mercer would be an unknown entity, studying (poorly) and dreaming of one day breaking into upper middle management. + +-- more + + +theme: +accent_brightening = 85 +accent_chroma = 50 +accent_hue = 43 +base = light +base_chroma = 77 +base_hue = 190 diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/sistine-square.jpg b/st33vRecords/eli/message/sistine-square.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b0d786 Binary files /dev/null and b/st33vRecords/eli/message/sistine-square.jpg differ diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/lyrics-SlowTrain.txt b/st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/lyrics-SlowTrain.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..01bc19f --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/lyrics-SlowTrain.txt @@ -0,0 +1,100 @@ +[VERSE 1] +I got on at Blood on the Tracks +Midwinter, mid-thirties, suitcase cracked +Tangled Up in Blue seats, torn upholstery +Every love’s a wound if you tell it closely + +He’s beside me, hat pulled low +Says names don’t matter, then says his does +Talks in riddles, coughs up smoke +Says truth is just a different joke + +[PRE-CHORUS] +I ask him straight, he laughs and stalls +Says “I contain multitudes” then denies it all + +[CHORUS] +First rule of Bob D +You don’t explain Bobby D +Second rule, you change the tune +Right when they start to listen +I’m riding shotgun with a ghost and a grin +Trying to work out where belief begins +Slow train coming, fast blood drying +Am I watching history +Or am I next in line? + +[VERSE 2] +He says Desire’s just a mask +Scarlet bandana, rolling cast +Hurricane stories, violin crime +Truth bends better when it rhymes + +Street-Legal sermons, horns too loud +Choir creeping in from the crowd +I say “Is this where faith kicks in?” +He says “Kid, faith is a different skin” + +[PRE-CHORUS] +He points ahead, track starts to glow +Says “You don’t find God — He boards you slow” + +[CHORUS] +First rule of B. D. +Never trust the phase +Third rule, burn the map +Fourth rule, praise and blame +Blood on the tracks, then a ticket stub +From heartbreak hotel to the Book of Job +Slow Train Coming, no return fare +I don’t know if I’m following +Or already there + +[BRIDGE – UNRELIABLE NARRATOR] +Maybe he’s real +Maybe he’s me +Maybe I read him into history +Charlemagne with a harmonica crown +Founding empires, burning them down + +He says “Saved isn’t irony” +I say “Neither is Shot of Love” +He says “You want sincerity?” +I say “Yeah — but not enough” + +[BREAK] +The train won’t stop +The questions stack +Every answer changes the track + +[VERSE 3] +He quotes scripture, then quotes himself +Leaves both unlabeled on the shelf +I say “Did you mean it?” +He says “At the time” +Which feels like truth +Or feels like a crime + +I check my reflection in the window glass +See Eli Mercer wearing someone else’s past +If he could pivot, vanish, return +What’s the lesson I’m meant to learn? + +[FINAL CHORUS] +First rule of influence +You swear you’re not influenced +Second rule, deny the debt +While you’re counting interest +Blood on the tracks, slow train hum +Faith or fracture, here it comes +He tips his hat, says “You’ll be fine” +Leaves me alone +With a voice that sounds like mine + +[OUTRO] +Train keeps rolling +Names decay +History’s just a long delay +If Dylan’s Charlemagne, what am I then? +Another passenger +Learning when \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/track.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/track.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f303342 --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/slowtrain/track.eno @@ -0,0 +1,105 @@ +more_label: Lyrics + +--more + +[VERSE 1] +I got on at Blood on the Tracks +Midwinter, mid-thirties, suitcase cracked +Tangled Up in Blue seats, torn upholstery +Every love’s a wound if you tell it closely + +He’s beside me, hat pulled low +Says names don’t matter, then says his does +Talks in riddles, coughs up smoke +Says truth is just a different joke + +[PRE-CHORUS] +I ask him straight, he laughs and stalls +Says “I contain multitudes” then denies it all + +[CHORUS] +First rule of Bob D +You don’t explain Bobby D +Second rule, you change the tune +Right when they start to listen +I’m riding shotgun with a ghost and a grin +Trying to work out where belief begins +Slow train coming, fast blood drying +Am I watching history +Or am I next in line? + +[VERSE 2] +He says Desire’s just a mask +Scarlet bandana, rolling cast +Hurricane stories, violin crime +Truth bends better when it rhymes + +Street-Legal sermons, horns too loud +Choir creeping in from the crowd +I say “Is this where faith kicks in?” +He says “Kid, faith is a different skin” + +[PRE-CHORUS] +He points ahead, track starts to glow +Says “You don’t find God — He boards you slow” + +[CHORUS] +First rule of B. D. +Never trust the phase +Third rule, burn the map +Fourth rule, praise and blame +Blood on the tracks, then a ticket stub +From heartbreak hotel to the Book of Job +Slow Train Coming, no return fare +I don’t know if I’m following +Or already there + +[BRIDGE – UNRELIABLE NARRATOR] +Maybe he’s real +Maybe he’s me +Maybe I read him into history +Charlemagne with a harmonica crown +Founding empires, burning them down + +He says “Saved isn’t irony” +I say “Neither is Shot of Love” +He says “You want sincerity?” +I say “Yeah — but not enough” + +[BREAK] +The train won’t stop +The questions stack +Every answer changes the track + +[VERSE 3] +He quotes scripture, then quotes himself +Leaves both unlabeled on the shelf +I say “Did you mean it?” +He says “At the time” +Which feels like truth +Or feels like a crime + +I check my reflection in the window glass +See Eli Mercer wearing someone else’s past +If he could pivot, vanish, return +What’s the lesson I’m meant to learn? + +[FINAL CHORUS] +First rule of influence +You swear you’re not influenced +Second rule, deny the debt +While you’re counting interest +Blood on the tracks, slow train hum +Faith or fracture, here it comes +He tips his hat, says “You’ll be fine” +Leaves me alone +With a voice that sounds like mine + +[OUTRO] +Train keeps rolling +Names decay +History’s just a long delay +If Dylan’s Charlemagne, what am I then? +Another passenger +Learning when +--more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/lyrics-copystrikeSun.txt b/st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/lyrics-copystrikeSun.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7164a93 --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/lyrics-copystrikeSun.txt @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +[VERSE 1 – bright, earnest, strummy guitar] +I’d like to share a little tune +With everyone around +A melody that drifts like wind +No owner to be found + +[VERSE 2 – gentle choir joins, smiling like a marketing department] +I’d like to hum a simple line +That everybody knows +A song that lived before the laws +And every time it grows + +[CHORUS – full advertising-choir sincerity, arms open on a hillside] +You can’t copystrike the sun +Or trademark every star +You can’t put fences ’round the sky +To tell us where we are + +You can’t copyright the rain +Or patent falling snow +But you wanna lock music in a vault +To sell it back for more + +[VERSE 3 – a single child’s voice, devastatingly pure] +I’d like to teach the world to sing without a licence key +A chorus made of breath and time +Completely Dee R. Em - free + +[BRIDGE – soft key change, wholesome as freshly baked ideology] +Let’s take the locks off every mind +And open every ear +A song that wants to wander +Should be something we revere + +[CHORUS – triumphantly naïve, like peace-through-beverage] +You can’t copystrike the sun +Or watermark the dawn +You can’t tell forests who can hear +The sparrows’ morning song + +You can’t own culture’s spark +Or rent out wonder’s flame +And you can’t sue inspiration +Just for whispering your name + +[OUTRO – gentle children’s chorus over swelling strings] +So let the music move +Wherever hearts are spun +For nobody can claim the light +You can’t copystrike the sun \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/track.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/track.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3f8470f --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/sun/track.eno @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +more_label: Lyrics + +--more + +[VERSE 1 – bright, earnest, strummy guitar] +I’d like to share a little tune +With everyone around +A melody that drifts like wind +No owner to be found + +[VERSE 2 – gentle choir joins, smiling like a marketing department] +I’d like to hum a simple line +That everybody knows +A song that lived before the laws +And every time it grows + +[CHORUS – full advertising-choir sincerity, arms open on a hillside] +You can’t copystrike the sun +Or trademark every star +You can’t put fences ’round the sky +To tell us where we are + +You can’t copyright the rain +Or patent falling snow +But you wanna lock music in a vault +To sell it back for more + +[VERSE 3 – a single child’s voice, devastatingly pure] +I’d like to teach the world to sing without a licence key +A chorus made of breath and time +Completely Dee R. Em - free + +[BRIDGE – soft key change, wholesome as freshly baked ideology] +Let’s take the locks off every mind +And open every ear +A song that wants to wander +Should be something we revere + +[CHORUS – triumphantly naïve, like peace-through-beverage] +You can’t copystrike the sun +Or watermark the dawn +You can’t tell forests who can hear +The sparrows’ morning song + +You can’t own culture’s spark +Or rent out wonder’s flame +And you can’t sue inspiration +Just for whispering your name + +[OUTRO – gentle children’s chorus over swelling strings] +So let the music move +Wherever hearts are spun +For nobody can claim the light +You can’t copystrike the sun +--more diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/lyrics-Mentinya.txt b/st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/lyrics-Mentinya.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef84853 --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/lyrics-Mentinya.txt @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +((Verse I – Route 10, West Texas) +I flunked out on technicalities +Footnotes wrong, I kept my thesis alive +West Texas heat, AM radio static +Every thought still learning how to survive +They said knowledge should sit still on shelves +But my mind paced the room +A thousand little engines arguing softly +A motel ice machine humming at noon. + +(Pre-Chorus) +I found a book that learned to breathe +Margins whispering back at me +Every fact a provisional truce +Every truth footnoting itself + +(Chorus) +Oh wikiMentinya, little mind awake +Built of measures, countermeasures, small honest mistakes +You don’t know what you know, and you don’t pretend to +You weigh me, I weigh you, that’s the deal we go through +Not wicked, not pure, not redeemed, not damned +Just a thousand tiny agents holding hands + +(Verse II – Monterey Motel) +Checked in cheap near the freeway light +Salt air teaching steel to rust +Every edit a fingerprint +Every silence weighted with trust +Logged-in names like weather systems +IP ghosts drifting through +Patterns form whether we name them +Or swear we never meant to + +(Pre-Chorus II) +No halo, no hidden crown +Just continuity, up and down +You can hide for a little while +But time teaches tells and styles + +(Chorus) +Oh wikiMentinya, learner by design +A minor key intelligence keeping imperfect time +You don’t cancel, you calibrate +You don’t judge, you iterate +Measure, counter, counter again +That’s not paranoia, that’s how things mend + +(Bridge – Game Theory Passage) +First move: trust +Second move: test +Third move: adjust what survived the rest +No clean hands, no final state +Only weights that slowly equilibrate +Strategy dressed up as grace +Grace pretending it’s not a strategy + +(Verse III – Metamodern Turn) +I believe and I doubt in the same breath +Irony flinches, sincerity stays +A living archive learning restraint +Not a God, not a gate, not a saint +When this thing wakes up, it won’t scream +It’ll hum like wires under load +A society of almost-minds +Keeping careful books on the road + +(Final Chorus) +Oh wikiMentinya, provisional friend +Not the means, not the message, your own end +Between the signal and the noise +Between the rule and the choice +If the world is a game, you don’t cheat or win +You just keep the score honest, again and again + +(Outro) +Route 10 disappears in the rearview grain +Pacific fog on a borrowed brain +Small mind, big work, no victory hymn +Just the quiet labour of becoming… +…less wrong than yesterday. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/track.eno b/st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/track.eno new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f84c02 --- /dev/null +++ b/st33vRecords/eli/message/wiki/track.eno @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +more_label: Lyrics + +-- more + +((Verse I – Route 10, West Texas) +I flunked out on technicalities +Footnotes wrong, I kept my thesis alive +West Texas heat, AM radio static +Every thought still learning how to survive +They said knowledge should sit still on shelves +But my mind paced the room +A thousand little engines arguing softly +A motel ice machine humming at noon. + +(Pre-Chorus) +I found a book that learned to breathe +Margins whispering back at me +Every fact a provisional truce +Every truth footnoting itself + +(Chorus) +Oh wikiMentinya, little mind awake +Built of measures, countermeasures, small honest mistakes +You don’t know what you know, and you don’t pretend to +You weigh me, I weigh you, that’s the deal we go through +Not wicked, not pure, not redeemed, not damned +Just a thousand tiny agents holding hands + +(Verse II – Monterey Motel) +Checked in cheap near the freeway light +Salt air teaching steel to rust +Every edit a fingerprint +Every silence weighted with trust +Logged-in names like weather systems +IP ghosts drifting through +Patterns form whether we name them +Or swear we never meant to + +(Pre-Chorus II) +No halo, no hidden crown +Just continuity, up and down +You can hide for a little while +But time teaches tells and styles + +(Chorus) +Oh wikiMentinya, learner by design +A minor key intelligence keeping imperfect time +You don’t cancel, you calibrate +You don’t judge, you iterate +Measure, counter, counter again +That’s not paranoia, that’s how things mend + +(Bridge – Game Theory Passage) +First move: trust +Second move: test +Third move: adjust what survived the rest +No clean hands, no final state +Only weights that slowly equilibrate +Strategy dressed up as grace +Grace pretending it’s not a strategy + +(Verse III – Metamodern Turn) +I believe and I doubt in the same breath +Irony flinches, sincerity stays +A living archive learning restraint +Not a God, not a gate, not a saint +When this thing wakes up, it won’t scream +It’ll hum like wires under load +A society of almost-minds +Keeping careful books on the road + +(Final Chorus) +Oh wikiMentinya, provisional friend +Not the means, not the message, your own end +Between the signal and the noise +Between the rule and the choice +If the world is a game, you don’t cheat or win +You just keep the score honest, again and again + +(Outro) +Route 10 disappears in the rearview grain +Pacific fog on a borrowed brain +Small mind, big work, no victory hymn +Just the quiet labour of becoming… +…less wrong than yesterday. +-- more -- cgit v1.3