We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

a modern entrapment

from 1C: pre - launch sequence by Skin Tone

/
  • Limited Edition Zine + CDr
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Covers screen printed by Lucas Huang
    Hand assembled by Skin Tone

    Includes unlimited streaming of 1C: pre - launch sequence via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

lyrics

There was a recruitment station at the job fair on campus. My masters supervisor had recommended I go to the job fair. Which I took to mean that I wasn’t cut out for a PhD. The job fair was a few weeks before my defense. For the sake of my education I had accrued a great deal of debt and no immediately profitable skills. While personally rewarding at times my masters degree in linguistics was not hugely attractive to potential employers.

At the job fair a young woman approached me. Her smile was improbably large. She asked me what I was looking for, I said a job. She laughed and asked me what I studied, I said linguistics. We might have some opportunities for that she said as she handed me a pen. It was a blue pen with a lanyard. BarrickTX was printed on the pen in gold.

After the recruitment fair I went to the bank. The job fair had failed to inspire me and I wondered how long I had before I needed to work. I had some savings, I thought.

There was coffee, in a large thermos by the door of the bank. The interior was brand new. Every surface was a touch screen. Except for the yellowed plastic of the thermos and the ecoboard cups beside it. I poured myself a cup and got in line. Predictably the bank said I had to work immediately. The banker showed me a three-dee-rendering of the architecture of my debt. It was incomprehensible to me. The banker told me I needed to start making money right now.

I was afraid as I rode home on the metro. How could I repay a debt I didn’t even understand. How was I so ill-prepared for the world that I didn’t even know what the punishment could be for falling into arrears. I tried to curl myself into a ball. I tried to collapse into the seat of the metrocar. I tried to sink into the seat down and down. The people around me, I worried could see my debt, see my ill-preparedness, could see through me and see that I wasn’t like them, that I was a failure.

When I got home as I fumbled for my keys in my jacket pocket my hand happened upon the pen from the recruitment station at the job fair. BarrickTX. I recognized the name they were a large company. An international player. I started looking them up before I was even through the door. What had the woman said? “We might have some opportunities for that.” It turned out that BarrickTX was an umbrella trade-name for a variety of companies involved in various parts of the extraction industry. BarrickTX like everyone else in the extraction game had been sinking vast sums of money into the development of interstellar operations. Telecom owned the Solar system. And they took a conservationist position claiming that the gravitational impact of large-scale extra-terrestrial extraction in the inner solar system was a serious risk to the long-term viability of their satellite arrays and thus their business interests. But beyond the solar colonies… Well, that was fair game and ever since ValeAstro, it became a tangible dream. BarrickTX was prepared to launch it’s phase 2 exploration and acquisition missions. Ultra deep space. They were indeed hiring biologists, geologists, roughnecks and linguists.

credits

from 1C: pre - launch sequence, released February 15, 2016
The Linguist: James Goddard

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Skin Tone Montreal, Québec

Feel free to send an email to Skin Tone (skin0tone at gmail dot com)

contact / help

Contact Skin Tone

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Skin Tone, you may also like: