Limited Edition black vinyl version of our new album. Mastered by Grammy Award winning Lewis Hopkin. Colour sleeve and label. Designed by David Cuesta of Creative R&D. Limited to 300 copies.
Please note - postage costs to UK are 1st class standard. If you'd like it sent second class, please reduce postage by 65p. If you'd like it sent registered/signed for please contact us directly.
Includes unlimited streaming of Boat Building
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 2 days
edition of 300
£18GBPor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited Edition black vinyl version of our new album. Mastered by Grammy Award winning Lewis Hopkin. Colour sleeve and label. Designed by David Cuesta of Creative R&D. Limited to 300 copies.
PLUS download
PLUS Limited Edition 40 page book with all lyrics from Boat Building album and introduction by Chris Redmond. Signed with personal message from Chris Redmond.
PLEASE NOTE - Postage in UK is first class, standard. If you'd like it sent 2nd class, reduce the P&P by 65p. If you'd like it sent tracked/signed, please contact us directly to arrange.
Includes unlimited streaming of Boat Building
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 2 days
edition of 300
£23GBPor more
Limited edition 50 page book with all lyrics from Boat Building album and introduction by Chris Redmond. Signed with personal message from Chris Redmond. Design and artwork by David Cuesta.
ships out within 2 days
edition of 200
£6GBPor more
lyrics
I read myself to sleep.
Phone apocalypse.
Late night blue light
news feed for scripture.
It’s hard to rest
when everything you read
tells you the ship is listing.
We’re springing leaks
but the captain
and the crew aren’t listening.
Smiling while fighting, teeth,
the colour of ambition.
Now even in my dreams
I’m rescuing children
from floods and liars.
Turn the ship around,
please, turn the ship around.
Does anyone else even know how to steer it?
Gold yachts,
poison plots,
treasure chest beaters,
clean suits
and arms dealer dinners,
oil, aftershave
and families torn
like cheap meat.
Rebels and rubble,
power in a bubble,
cliches littered like dog turds.
Strobe light news cycle.
Squandered blood,
auctioned hopes,
sinking boats,
songs for the dead,
prayers,
headlines,
hymns,
fires,
footballers,
celebrities in the jungle,
gossip on the blindside.
If you blink and cover your ears
you’ll miss the bodies like flotsam,
drowning and burning,
falling and running.
The sea’s rising to meet us,
the clock’s running down,
lack
like a lock and key,
clock’s running down,
privilege
like a lock and key,
clock’s running down
and newsfeed
and newsfeed
and newsfeed
and I need to sleep.
And in the dream
a creature comes to me.
She has the body of a griffin,
heart of the blackest ocean,
voice of Nina Simone.
She crushes my phone with her piano key talons,
I say, but the ship! The ship is sinking
and that was my window.
She says, windows
are only as good as the view they frame.
She says, imagine another ship,
a different ship.
Tall mast,
oars and sails,
a figurehead,
a boat built only from breath
and the smoke from yesterday’s fires.
She says, paint it in whatever colours
you imagine love to be.
She says, breathe in,
stand on the deck,
listen to the whump of the wind
in the canvas,
the groan of masts
the clatter of rigging, sit
on one of the long benches,
notice the others sitting with you.
I look around and everywhere
people are rowing, singing as they do.
Bus drivers,
nurses,
poets,
tight-rope walkers.
She says, now, row.
Press the oars into your palms.
Feel the weight of waves,
foam on skin of blue belly below
and row.
Breathe.
Row.
credits
from Boat Building,
released November 27, 2020
Words - Chris Redmond
Music - Riaan Vosloo, Patrick Davey, Arthur Lea, Chris Redmond
For over a decade Tongue Fu have built a cult following at their live shows where people expect the unexpected. Writer,
musician and founder, Chris Redmond, invites poets, comedians, storytellers and rappers to take risks, re-working material live with improvised soundtracks from fleet footed, genre-crunching musicians.
Previous collaborators include Kate Tempest, Soweto Kinch and Akala....more
An old friend of ours and a truly inspiring writer, performer and human. Kae could make a poem that changed your life out of the contents of your bins. Tongue Fu
