TT6:04
10" vinyl
Original release date: October 20, 1998
Lepidoptera
Leper
The only song anyone in our band has ever written in musical notation is "Lepidoptera," the seventh song on Transaction de Novo. A few months ago, in a rare, serendipitous moment, I turned the pages of this music upside down - the bass clef became the treble clef, the treble became the bass - and played on a keyboard the new formation of notes that appeared on the page. It instantly made sense. It didn't sound backwards, but it sounded reversed, turned inside out and over all at once. As the reverse of a song lyrically based on perspective, it also seemed musically to be telling the other side of the story: in "Lepidoptera," the speaker is a person, the object is a moth; in the song that became "Leper," especially because the music appeared by accident, the speaker seemed to be the moth and the object the former subject. We finished the song based on this idea of reversal, lyrically and musically carrying it to its logical conclusion, and then began to think about another logical conclusion: a song that forms a mirror image of anopther song is, literally, the perfect b-side, the record turned upside-down.
A recorded by Steve Albini / B recorded by Mark Elliott.
All songs Kadane, Kadane
©1992,93 Bedhead Songs (ASCAP)
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