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sonja's close shave

by sonja berlin-jones

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1.
my stuff broke me like gravity 02:59
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2.
hikawa air b and b 18:22
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3.
dull grebe detail 03:43
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4.
released wild suburb love 02:58
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5.
edihorrhaoeih 12:39
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6.
quiet spring and happy 02:21
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7.
coppice by an inland sea 02:33
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8.
peineillie cairn 02:15
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9.
lichen stainings 06:20
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about

THIS ALBUM CONTAINS PREVIOUSLY-RELEASED STUFF

This is my final album - the final album to appear on this site. In future all Sonja-ish albums will appear under my real name = simonaulman.bandcamp.com/music

.........................

I was delighted a couple of days ago to get a message from a record label saying they wanted to release a Greatest Hits album of my music. No I am not making this up. If anyone was making anything up, it was them. Anyway for a while I was very high. We musicians - especially those of us at this end of the spectrum where we seem to go out of our way to make music that no one could possibly like - we musicians are of course as sensitive as anyone else, we yearn for love and fame and money and cable TV.

So I compiled some of my favourite tracks - things I've made over the past decade. Here it is. Actually almost everything comes from the past month - just because I have an appalling memory and can't remember any of the good stuff I did more than about a month ago. If such stuff exists. So yes - if you do listen to this and have been paying attention to my output over the last few weeks (ie I am now talking to absolutely no one who exists) then you will get that deja-vu thing. It is not imagination. It is not even deja-vu. It is just me being very lazy and also very happy - because truly I do think I've done some very good stuff.

So I collected this album together and originally titled it "progress always regresses" and re-read the emails from the record label to see what they wanted me to do with it. Stick it up my arse, basically. They wanted me to pay about $200 a year and they'd stick this album and occasional future albums on their site and they'd give me 10% of the profits. Apparently their site gets about a million visits a day or something and in the long run I would get that fame and money and swimming pool that I've been working towards these last 800 musical years.

I slept on it last night. And you know what - I decided that I couldn't handle it. I really couldn't. It's just this weird quirk I have - I do not like being popular - I do not trust other people who are popular - I rarely like films or books or music that is/are popular. That's not inverted snobbery - promise. It's just what I've found - from experience. People are stupid. I don't like coming out with this stuff, because it just makes me sound like a sulky teenager or a lonely incel. But anyway, who isn't involuntarily celibate in all the minutes or years between sex, and who isn't sometimes sulky and who isn't sometimes lonely ... ? .... okay I will never again be a teenager.

So turn it up and have fun - it's yours, for free - here on "my" site where I shall reap 100% of the profits (zero pee) and I will never get an email in the future from someone in an office saying that they haven't had any music from me lately and could I please get my finger out or I'll be hearing from their lawyers - here where I can be as sulky as I like and where I can do whatever I want with my incel-ish hands sitting here in front of my sexy computer.

I know this album is good because last night I was over at the 1865 Club thingy to see Dead By April, who I must admit I had never heard of, but a friend said they were good, and I'm afraid he was wrong. True - I was the only person in this small warehouse of hundreds of people who thought this way. But they were rubbish. Is all music nowadays like Hollywood's idea of what music is like ? - what I mean is, does every band fit into a genre and have its uniform and its sound-rules and the fans know exactly how to behave because they have a rulebook too.

Dear god, is there anyone else out there who just does what they want to do and doesn't dress like they've been told, and act like they've been told, and try hard to fit in. Even the outlaws have their laws. It's why I've always hated "scenes". I never want to be among the in-crowd - even when the in-crowd think they're just the outsiders, they're the horriblest cliquey-est inbreddiest smuggest cunts of all. Just as I have spurned my fabulous musical talent and instead chosen to make music that doesn't fit in, so I shall spurn my fabulous physical beauty and turn away all the lovers who clamour to touch me for I have no wish or need to be touched by needy people, and I shall hang on to the few remaining pennies that I have, I shall not hand them over to some record label that wants them, because wanty people are even more awful than needy people.

photo by Vanessa Oliver

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released May 9, 2023

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sonja berlin-jones Southampton, UK

katharinebeastman.bandcamp.com

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