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IIX: Soma

by The Plaster Cramp

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  • Poster/Print + Digital Album

    The beautiful artwork for Soma without the pesky vinyl. One full-color 12"x12" album jacket and one full-color 11"x11" insert. Comes with a download of the complete record. Images by Dean C. Thornton, Genevieve V. C. Johnson, and Douglas W. Milliken.

    Includes unlimited streaming of IIX: Soma via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    11
    releases

    Get all 11 The Plaster Cramp releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of IX: The Hinge, IIX: Soma, VII: Wax-Eater, Spatial Memory :: Silken Gag, VI: Sunchoke, V: Nightjar, Dao Yurenat, Ganymede, and 3 more. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

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  • Limited Edition 12" Vinyl
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of IIX: Soma via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out
1.
No Homecoming 05:53
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2.
Proselyte Strut 04:41
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3.
Proselyte (Surface) 03:06
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4.
Soma (Pyloris) 04:11
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5.
It Follows 02:52
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6.
Wolf in a Basket 02:03
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7.
Slinky of the Underfed 02:52
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8.
Creature on a String 04:31
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9.
The Plaster Cramp (mesopelagia) 04:16
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10.
Soma (Duodenum) 03:25
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11.
No Farewell 03:24
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about

No poetry.

No abstractions.

I'm tired.

My bones hurt and my head is foggy and this associative chain of memories keeps cycling back to some of the folks who have meant the most to me throughout my life---Joshua, Glen, H., so many others---and to whom I can never speak again, touch again, laugh with or sleep beside again. They are gone, some more mysteriously than others. But I'm still here.

From the very start, death's sorrowful hand has defined my life (my mother was convinced I was the reincarnation of my brother Daniel: try growing up "normal" with that as the opening lines to your tragic backstory). The way I listen, the stiffness in my gait, how I respond to the sight of something light adrift on a morning thermal: everything about me is somehow informed by loss, and it's exhausting. I'm tired of the loving part of me being so constantly, irreversibly bound to death. Tired of and tired by. Like a leafless vine fed on sour milk, reaching for something high above, something close to where the light shines through: my roots will never not be sown through the fertile soil, black with worm castings and moldering leaves.

So much for no poetry. Too tired to stick to my own arbitrary rules. Glen would playfully mock me for this. H. wouldn't give a shit either way. I don't know how Josh would react because he died when we were still both so young, barely in school: all I really remember is his laughter and his curling locks and how one time we were racing through his grandparents' kitchen and somehow knocked over an extension ladder (why was there a ladder in the kitchen?), how it came down hard and fast on my bare foot and blackened my big toenail which, in a few days, would terrifyingly fall off. Who else alive knows this story? I'm too tired to answer my own questions.

Somehow, this all equals eleven songs etched in black lacquer. Songs written through the cipher of my worn-down corpus. Songs capturing the listless fatigue stitched through the endless prayer of remembering. Songs embodying an exuberance I wish I could hold and make real. Songs of incidental beauty when I remember not everyone I love is dead. Songs I can write yet only others can perform.

---Douglas W. Milliken

credits

released October 27, 2023

Douglas W. Milliken (composition, arrangement, keyboards, electronics, production)
Dead Charlie (reeds, bass recorder, arrangement, contrabass, percussion)
Pella (piano, vibraphone, keyboards, arrangement, viola, horns)
Ants (horns)
Kes (percussion, marimba, kalimba, horns)
T (cello, percussion, alto trumpet)
Lawrence (drums, percussion, horns, broken air organ)

Additional production assistance by Dean C. Thornton.

Field recordings provided by Scott Sell, as well as klankbeeld and Benboncan at freesound.org.

Artwork by Dean C. Thornton, Genevieve Johnson, and Douglas W. Milliken.

Vinyl by Little Elephant (littleelephantcustomvinyl.com).

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The Plaster Cramp Maine

Punk kids with horns and a piano, bowed strings and percussive gadgets. Electronics that purr and electronics that glitch. A communal house and a lack of dogma. 10,000 ways of breaking something apart.

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