Fucked Up Discography: ''HIDDEN WORLD'' LP

Vibrations and hums the quantum sum where we're from...

Jacket - Front

Jacket - Back

Jacket - Image on inside of gate-fold:
This is the re-press version with stronger colours than the first press

Vinyl:
This is the re-press version with colour labels

Lyric Sheet - Front

Lyric Sheet - Back:
Vibrations and hums the quantum sum where we're from
felt in strings spread in rings spinning clouds eve Atom

Particle dust to dust clung now balls of fire conspire
Stars spit the molecules lit panspermigration comets

Sui generus in space amino acids in place
Cooling planets await fate until life shows its face

Double helix the code from which flowed the chromosome
Left hand supports life to divide and provide

create soil out of rock to build blocks on blank spots
bits and bugs make up weeds who build kingdoms of trees

bees speak to the world and change the shape of their tongues
they suck nectar from crowns and feed it to their young

gold grains stick to their legs so we spread it around
the whole world is alive on the pollen they've found

the fecundity spreads to all parts of the plot
until finally people emerge from the box

the codes of the world are wrapped into our brains
so things burst in to flame when we give them their names

a word and a breath breathed life to ignite
the world stood on its head to sing the songs made of light

feed for new seeds was just need by our mention
the plants that we said made to stand at attention

trade scant collection see selfing clone generation
ultimate uses defined by humankind

resurrection haberian food green revolution collude
tired nitrogen giants perspire a toxic attire

our end delivered by birds riddle by all the wrong words
we trade our bodies for bytes and give viruses and turn

subsist to simply exist turn on the next living switch
vibrations and hums the quantum sum where we're from

Stats:

Year: 2006
Label: Deranged Records DER-87 *
*Three different catalogue numbers appear on the release: DY087 on insert, DER 87 on back of jacket and Deranged - 87 on labels.

Matrix A: DY-87-A GOLDEN
Matrix B: DY-87-B GOLDEN

Matrix C: DY-87-C GOLDEN
Matrix D: DY-87-D GOLDEN

Inserts:
Double-sided insert, as pictured above
Some (maybe all?) first pressings also include a poster - see below.

Variants:
Pre-order version (340 copies of first press, with stamped dust-sleeves)
First Press (monochrome labels)
'Hybrid Press' (one monochrome-label disc, one coloured)
Repress (colour labels)

First pressing vinyl - monochrome labels.
Pre-order copies had the FU logo stamped on the sleeves. The stamps were a random mixture or red, blue and black ink

First Press Jacket - Image on inside of gate-fold:
The colours of the first press are a little washed out, compared to the repress

Colour comparison:
Top: First Press
Bottom: Repress

Poster:
Came with some, maybe all of the first press. Possibly because the colours on the jacket image were not quite right?

Notes:

Extract From Interview With 'Heartattack' Zine - (LFG Post April 24 2006):

How is the LP coming along anyhow?

10,000 Marbles: It’s coming along great. We are firming up the first singles and are going to be ready to record soon. It will be the definitive Fucked Up project...

...the idea behind the album, is that there is such a multiverse in the quality things you can get involved in - if you take a medium or an idea and hide things just below the surface of what’s there, and have people find them, they're going to start looking for other hidden things in everything they see, and start being more conscious, about everything. Just like when you're a child, and you find your first nickel on the ground - you start to look at the ground with a lot more attention and concentration.

Extract From Interview With 'Life's A Rape Zine' - (LFG Post May 16 2006):

Fucked Up’s lyrics, especially post-“Dance of Death” have lots of references to the arcane and ancient (“Thule society,” a lot of “Looking For Gold,” etc.). What is the inspiration for these kind of lyrics? Why the shift from the “political” songs, like “No Pasaran,” “Municipal Prick,” etc., or more literal lyrics like “Litany” that make up Fucked Up’s earlier work?

Pink Eyes: The new lyrics are still political. The arcane stuff we are singing about is still applicable today. It's not like we are singing about dinosaurs. These are moments in history that have shaped the era we are living in. Sometimes the ancient is used as a metaphor for today. I think the relevance of a song like Looking for Gold is far greater then No Pasaran. We are certainly not as literal these days just because there is really only so many ways to say you hate your job. All the songs I have written for the LP are political songs, while maybe not as overtly so as Police, but political all the same.

Extract From Interview With 'Exclaim' - (October 2006):

What kind of label rigmarole did you guys go through?

Vocalist Pink Eye: We decided we wanted to do a record that was going to be a lot bigger — first of all, it was going to be an LP. We knew we couldn’t put that record out on Deranged, because Deranged said they could give us $2000 to record, and we knew this would cost more — even though I later told Jade Tree it was only going to cost $2000. One day I just went home, looked at every record I had and said, "I’m going to write to every label I can find…” Before, we were talking to Steve Kado and were like "yeah, it would be really cool if Owen Palett played on our record.” He was great.

Guitarist Concentration Camp: He came in and cut one violin line — I’m like, "Oh, cool! Thanks man!” and he was like, "No, I’ve got to do eight more tracks over top of it.” It was neat for us, being really threadbare musicians — and I think it was a breath of fresh air for [producer Jon Drew] to work with a competent musician for an hour…

Pink Eye: We talk about God more on this record than a Christian band.

Are you religious?

Pink Eye: Not at all. Not. At. All.

Guitarist 10,000 Marbles: We ran out of metaphors.

Pink Eye: We exhausted all those metaphors about moshing and friends and the pit. So now we were like, "God, what’s left?”

Concentration Camp: God!

Interview with David Eliade - (Jagged Visions Zine) ( LFG Post Nov 04 2007)

What is Wilsim Publogy?

Wilsim Publogy was an offshoot of Romanian Manicheanism, and the whole Gnosticism trip. It sees cosmology in the same way as the Gnostics, in that the universe, or the being, or whatever, is split into these two forces, “light” and “dark”, or what have you, but differs in that Publogy doesn’t see the forces as necessarily opposite, but the same. It’s more into dualism, more along the lines of Vedantic Hinduism, who thought in terms of the “non duality of duality”. The whole Kabbalist “two poles” idea where the opposing forces are actually just different expressions of the same thing. We tried to be influenced by this when we were making “Hidden World”, and it shows up in songs like “Triumph of Life”, and “Two Snakes” and was the inspiration for the cover art. Actually, that’s another way Mircea comes back in, the quote we used from him in the record; “to be no longer conditions by a pair of opposites results in absolute freedom”. Especially in the world now where you’ve got your two political ideas, everyone has these strong feelings of wrong and right – we’re living in an age where the multitude has been slashed into these singular opposites where life is a series of choices between two opposites, and there are really only two ways of existing, you know “right” or “left”. It’s important I think to try and pull the crate back open, try to release these other ways of existing. And to do that we try to just take away the divisions and the opposites and just shine through Wilsim Publogy.

Extract From Interview 'Scene Point Blank' - (LFG Post November 14 2006):

Scene Point Blank: One of my questions was going to be if you had any plans to make Looking For Gold more widely available, but you recently made it available online. Why did you decide to release it online rather than re-pressing it on vinyl or releasing it in some other format?

Holst

10,000 Marbles: We didn't release it as a record because we didn't want people to have to pay for it. The original 12" became such an economic fiasco that we just figured fuck it, why put effort and money into releasing a record that people are just going to flip for more cash anyhow. The song fits thematically with Hidden World, so we want it to act as a companion piece, but one you don't have you pay more money for. Regardless, music isn't really about physical objects anymore anyhow, so why waste the petrol if people are going to listen to it on the computer anyhow? I can't tell you i haven't listened to an actually record in a long fucking time. The song is available online

Scene Point Blank: It seems like a lot of your lyrics use a classic rhetorical strategy where you talk over an audience's head in hopes that they'll educate themselves. This is fairly uncommon in the broad world of punk, which is usually much more didactic; what's the rationale behind this and what kind of responses have you seen?

10,000 Marbles: I just write how I'd like lyrics to appear. We don't want to tell anyone what to think, really, I just like my lyrics to rhyme, use interesting imagery and words, and be about interesting topics. I'm not in this to spread any particular worldview. And yeah, when we do have particularly objective topics, they're usually tucked inside a metaphor, so the song is more interesting and you aren't hit upside the head with rhetoric. I had militarism in mind when I wrote "Triumph of Life," and smoking when I did "Dance of Death," but i like being discreet, you know?

Scene Point Blank: Some of the recent Fucked Up material seems to be pushing in a bit more of an aestheticized direction in terms of content - with songs like "Teenage Problem" referencing André Gide and "Vivian Girls" with Henry Darger. What kind of artistic traditions do you see yourself engaging with or inhabiting (if any), beyond punk rock?

10,000 Marbles: None. This is what a punk band does - borrow, steal, etc. We're just a patchwork of a million other things. I don't think we have a defined or central aesthetic or ideology, we just know how to pick parts from other ones really well. I don't even read or like poetry, and I didn't really like Dargers book, but I do understand the power the things we use hold to other people. Recently I guess we're into illegalism, but that's not really art, and we can't really get arrested anymore. In fact - fuck art, it's the biggest scam racket going (other than bike locks).

Scene Point Blank: "Carried Out to the Sea" attacks naïve postmodernism, but it seems to me that an argument could be made that the broad theme of Hidden World is a kind of deconstruction - the way that totalizing, Manichean oppositions are unstable and create a "hidden world" that overcomes them. Is this just a misreading?

10,000 Marbles: Pink Eyes has this lyric cycle going on lately where his songs are about this constant dawning of change that is just a recycling of old parts.

Pink Eyes: "Carried Out to the Sea" is more about being frustrated that we live in an era where nothing is new and every time something comes into existence that looks as though it may turn into something worthwhile it is immediately jumped on before it has a chance to fully develop. There will never be another Seattle because nothing will ever develop to that point going unnoticed.

Scene Point Blank: What's "David Comes to Life" about?

Pink Eyes: David is about a kid who figures out that everyday he lives his life he is just going to commit more sin and thus take him further away from heaven. So instead of waiting in this horrible life like the rest of us to simply die one day riddled with sin and have to then try to get into heaven, he is going to just kill himself, sin free, to get to heaven and plead his case.

(Editors Note: The trickster who did this interview also wrote this: ""David Comes to Life" is one of the band's most accessible songs yet, a tightly wound, almost-power pop tune very much in the vein of the Undertones and even the Ramones. The song's lyrics (penned by Pink Eyes) present an interesting kind of religious dilemma: a boy (the eponymous David) recognizes that every moment he continues to live will only result in commission of further sins, taking him further and further from heaven. David decides to cut out the middleman and commit suicide in order to get to heaven and, in Pink Eyes' words, "plead his case." The song's chorus explains: "Death comes swiftly / To those who wait / But he's like the rest of us / An impatient ingrate.")

Shirt design by Alex Snelgrove:
Five Snakes + 1 Owl =

Extract From Interview With 'Alternative Press' Zine - (LFG Post October 23 2007):

Alternative Press: To that same point, I look at a title like Hidden World and consider it a guiding principle for the band – in other words, the surface is the least of what you're concerned with; the whole aim of what you're doing seems to be nudging people toward looking at underlying systems, perception versus reality, etc. I realize this isn't a question, but we're not having a real conversation here, so it's the best I can do.

10,000 MARBLES: That's true. The only real guiding principle I have with lyrics or intentions is that I don't want to tell people what to think, maybe just how to think. But Fucked Up isn't political, and there is no agenda. People want to put meaning in places where there is none. Hidden World is about low places, of course, but I tried to be careful not to stretch those meanings to the point where you could say "…and so it's about looking at the systems that control the economy," or what have you. Take "Crusades," or the whole Hidden World motif: "Crusades" uses the metaphor of nature to describe zealotry, but to me, nature is the more interesting of the two; so on one hand, all the meaning to that song could just be on the surface.

Artwork By Brian Walsby commissioned by collector to go with LP Test Pressing:

Extract From Interview With 'Distort' Zine - (Posted on Jade Tree Site, undated):

Ok, so I know this is probably something you’ve talked about for the past month solid, and I could probably interpret this my own way, but I gotta ask this: tell us about why you decided to call the record HIDDEN WORLD.

10,000 Marbles: Because it’s got so many connotations. It was originally going to be called "Crusades" but it sounded way too melodramatic. I thought of "Hidden World" in relation to the whole game that goes on just underneath of what is immediately visible, in all sorts of realms. And then I was reading an E O Wilson essay, and came across the words "Hidden World" regarding the biology of ant colonies, and that nailed it.

So, each song on the record seems like an attempt to explore a certain realm, right? I mean, let’s start talking about the song "Crusades": this seems to be about religion, the religious mentality, what it actually means to devote yourself to belief… right? Is Crusades an exploration of the Hidden Worlds of the faithful?

10,000 Marbles: It isn’t just about religion, it’s about the process of committing your life over to ANY belief, whether it’s god, politics, punk, ect. I’m not really interested in chastising religion specifically, so I tried to make the metaphor in that song as broad as possible. It’s about closing your mind to just one perspective or way of thinking.

Sure, I used the word "religion" loosely, I can see that the use of Christian metaphor is probably the most convenient approach… anyhow, the closing lines of the song about being reborn again, is the idea here that commitment to belief on this level will perpetuate itself no matter what the actual focus of that belief is… just the devotion to belief above all else? I can’t really word this right, I'm sure you get what I mean… devotion to something separate from yourself is a constant, the only thing that changes is the object being focused on.

10,000 Marbles: Yeah, I mean, the metaphor is the plant world, and in nature all life is the struggle to perpetuate itself onto the next generation. The purpose of any organism is solely to pass its genes into the future, regardless of if those genes are the best or not (obviously the best ones are the ones being perpetuated). But these political games, religion, points of view, you can see how in society they mirror the same process – as soon as an idea takes hold, the people who believe in the idea will expend their political energies in order to send that idea deeper and deeper into society and culture. So the song is supposed to be about how people can get so carried away by their own viewpoints that they get insidious and hard to control, and people aren't really trying to move them along because they think they've got the best idea any more, but just that they find themselves behind the idea, regardless of what it is and what it means. In the end of the song I tried to take the biological metaphor to it’s logical conclusion – when a particular gene gets too strong or insidious it becomes endemic in nature – like alien plant species that colonize the entire terrestrial environment because they've quickly eliminated all their competition – so instead of having these healthy waterway areas for example that are rich in biology and different kinds of species, you just have this one kind of plant, and the elimination of a rich ecosystem. The comparison is that as ideas in society get stronger and stronger, they choke the life out of other ideas, so you get these ridiculous polar opposites in culture, like in the US where there are basically 2 primary political ideas, left wing, and right wing, which is totally fucking absurd. I mean there are millions and millions of free thinking and interesting humans in the United States but the whittling down of ideas has happened on such a massive level that there are only two ideas that have been strong enough to survive – left and right. So crusades is supposed to be how dangerous it is to try and get rid of opposing viewpoints, even if you don’t agree with them.

Would you be able to define what the Fucked Up crusade is, then? Would you be able to define it? Are you attempting to develop an idea to choke the life out OF others? Or an idea that would, to follow the biological metaphor, enrich and strengthen the ecosystem of ideas, the process of engagement with ideas? That seems to be what, on most levels, FU are trying to do, from the confusion and obfuscation of the early records to the bold tome that is HW…

10,000 Marbles: That's a good point. That’s why I've always said we aren't a political band, and we don’t want to tell people what to think. I've always been careful not to talk in any specific terms – like, I don’t want to tell people WHAT to think, I’d rather tell them HOW to think, you know? I'm not interested in singing about like slavery, or racism or whatever, because it isn't really my business getting involved in people’s opinions. I guess on one level it comes down to censorship – like I'm not into racism, but instead of like criminalizing racism, I’d rather just let it become overwhelmed by opposing viewpoints. And I want people to get involved with the FU project specifically to get ideas involved that I wouldn't have been able to think up. i mean here is another metaphor – ideas can be like trains that you just get on and ride them where ever they go. I don’t just want to give people tickets to get on these trains, I just want them to know how many trains there can be, if you look hard enough.

Anyhow… was the title CRUSADES dumped before the artwork / design was finished? I wanted to ask about it’s significance to the HIDDEN WORLD theme.

10,000 Marbles: Yeah Crusades was long gone at that point. It’s funny about the art, it looks really great and cohesive but it was actually a real rush job. Jade Tree gave us pretty strict deadlines and we had to get everything in at once. So while we were mixing down the last few songs I was still getting rough sketches on email in the studio. I sort of threw a few ideas at Jay 3 weeks before it was all finished and told him ultimately what one to go with. The artwork relates more specifically to Two Snakes obviously and Crusades. It ties into Hidden World on the surface because it’s sort of got this inviting vibe like the woman is saying "Yo come join me in the Hidden World" but it’s not really about that. The middle artwork is more a mash of a bunch of different ideas discussed in the record.

Where does the woman tie in, then?

10,000 Marbles: It was supposed to be a sexless figure, like the combination of a woman and a man. Like the whole front cover is supposed to represent the union of opposites.

She seems a little less inviting and more statuesque.

10,000 Marbles: Yeah but I mean with the path between the snakes.

Before I forget, what’s the deal with the symbols on the archway? are there any specific meaning behind the patterns there?

10,000 Marbles: The symbols and the archway are totally the artist. He also told me he hid a "bunch of anuses" in there too.

Final artwork related question before I ask you more on that point and TRIUMPH especially… the overlapping circles is overlapping ideas and the space where they overlap is the hidden world?

@FUCKEDUP
A symmetry finally as we transcend our strife, there are no sides, no divide, just the triumph of life

10,000 Marbles: Yeah – it’s a gnostic symbol – you know that Jesus fish? I read somewhere that if you extent the points where the fishes mouth would be, it makes these two circles that overlap. The gnostic idea was that heaven and earth where these two spheres that where at war for humanity. And in the centre where they meet, that’s the earth and human kind. So its the same deal – it’s supposed to be how there is a richer life when you don’t stand to one side and don’t commit yourself to one sphere or the other. The other cool thing is that the overlapping part is also a Vesica, which represents fertility in the obvious symbol of the vagina. We’re gonna do a record later that’s obsessed with vagina’s and wombs and motherhood and shit, so it will be a cool tie in.

Extract From Interview With 'Bang Bang' Blog - (French Blog - 20 May 2008):

What should we understand from that title? Does FU have a whole hidden world to show us ?

Marbles: Hidden World is about what is behind the layers; there are examples in every discipline. Huxley talked about it in Doors of Perception, what happens to your brain once you removed the walls of perception, you can see the Hidden World basically when you use a sharper tool to see things in greater detail. Buddhists talk about achieving higher levels of consciousness and acquiring new sensory abilities. You can even talk about the Hidden World in terms of belief – like what happens to your life and perspective once you start believing in new things, like magick or religion. There is a different hidden world for everyone.

One song that really intrigues me lyrically is Jacob’s Ladder with lyrics like: «I clearly can see now the devil is not the blight. A pact with the devil is necessitated to do the work of the angel so wipe away the tears that have been shed for an impotent Christ» Is it only about religion? Would you mind explaining those lyrics to me a little more deeply?

Marbles: I didn’t write the lyrics to this song, but Jacob’s Ladder is about the process of a good person being forced to do an evil thing, and whether or not evil exists as an ideal. There are lines from either Blake or Milton, but it’s revolves around the line «Evil be my good», about how one side can swallow up the other until there are sides any more. Just imagine being in a sticky situation where in order to do something you think is right, you have to sacrifice good, and do something wrong. I think he was using Christ and the devil as metaphors; it isn’t specifically about religion at all.

VIVIAN GIRLS is a song that seems to deal with the subject of paedophilia and how some people talk about it with disgust but would like to do it. Am I right or I got it wrong? Could you explain that song a little bit more? Why do you think the subject of paedophilia is not so often discussed in hardcore songs ?

Marbles: Vivian Girls is about the need for filth in order the create beauty. You can take this dichotomy anywhere – the need for crime in order to create law, the need for evil for there to be good, etc. The lyrics to this song are accounts of individuals taking great pleasure in sickening acts, which brings the two opposing sides to close for comfort. « Manqueller Man » is about how society has a great need for brutality, but also a great need to sequester it away. Vivian Girls describes when brutality and beauty are part of the same desire. We just release a song called « Teenage Problems » that is specifically about paedophilia.

Sleeve Note: