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--from the Walter Ehresman album "No Unifying Theme" (2004).

Download the whole album here: walterehresman.bandcamp.com/album/no-unifying-theme

See the video here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuyZs8nunyU

This track was several years in the making. "When I got back from Burning Man in 2000 (my second year there), I decided I really wanted to write a comprehensive song about the event from my perspective," Ehresman explains. " I wrote the lyrics that year, but really wasn't sure what musical direction to take.....I wanted to do justice to the depth of the experience, so the music had to be just right." The final result, recorded in 2003, makes use of a wide variety of styles: tribal percussion and synths form a bed over which desert electric guitar and a pulsing 5-string bass part drive the song. The Pink Floyd influence, which has manifested itself from time to time in Ehresman's recordings going all the way back to 1989's "Honor in the Swine?" release, rears its head again here-especially in the very trippy solo (played by Ehresman on MIDI guitar, modulated by breath controller).

lyrics

When They Burn the Man
(© 2000 Walter Ehresman)

Glowing arms reach for the sky;
No one there will ask you why;
Another way to say goodbye
to the life you're leading;
it's a vestige that you're feeding--
find a way to make it grow.
If you don't go then you won't know.

Gather in the driest place;
Creative storm transforms the space;
When you leave, you leave no trace
of the poisons you brought in--
hatred, fear, ideas of sin,
freedom lost inside a plan;
Will you scrape it from your skin,
when they burn the Man?

[break]
Won't you step inside the hive
(one without collective mind)
Your better self will start to shine;
Strange things glow out in the night;

You haven't seen this stuff before;
Your lips are dry, your throat is sore;
You may feel things are out of hand;
But I think you'll understand,
when they burn the Man.

credits

from The Best of​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​Electronic Rockers, track released January 1, 2004
--Walter Ehresman: vocals and vocal effects, guitars, fretless bass, 5-string fretted bass, MIDI guitar w/breath controller; keyboards, key loop triggering.

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Walter Ehresman San Miguel De Allende, Mexico

Called "the quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed local disc jockey Charlie Martin , Walter Ehresman was an eccentric presence in the Austin music scene from the '80s until his 2015 move to Mexico. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist...and a restless musical spirit, always looking for something new, expressed with fearlessly honest, socially-conscious lyrics. ... more

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