Keep It

Lyrics and music: Simon Carrillo, aka Crimson

"Addiction" could have been the title of this song.

The narrator of the verses is the personification of a drug I am addicted to: my phone.Like many, I have a toxic relationship with it.

Just like in Darren Aronofsky’s film*Requiem for a Dream*, with each passing season, what was supposed to be the foundation of a dream of emancipation and freedom gradually drops its mask and reveals its true nature:a drug that takes control. In my song, each verse represents a season: the chord progressions grow jarring over time,shifting from a tritoneto a semitone . The stable binary meter of the beginning gives way to a 5/4 time signature that evokes the pentagram. In fact, I’ve given this inner demon a name: “Soulsnatcher,” inspired by Victorian-era ghost stories and Radiohead’s song “Bodysnatchers.”

Proceeds from Keep It will be donated to the Association Addictions France.

That's Weird

Lyrics and music: Simon Carrillo, aka Crimson

I am afraid of sleep as one is afraid of a big hole,
Full of vague horror, leading who knows where.

Charles Baudelaire , « Le Gouffre » (Le Spleen de Paris)

The dreamlike fable "That's weird" was born from a strange dream in which the world goes haywire, objects fly through the air, and time collapses. And at the heart of this chaos appears an infinite well.

This well is a chasm of memory, knowledge, emotions... but also an abyss capable of containing all human absurdities and violence. A modern counterpart to the ancient wishing well, this modern well into which we throw virtual currency struck me as a metaphor for our times: a place where we could lock away collective stupidity, the madness of a world where the power of destruction exceeds that of creation. This nightmare is absurd, disturbing, sarcastic, and yet so close to the abyss into which the world is being sucked. 

In this piece, somewhere between irony and vertigo, I tried to convey the feeling of diving into this infinite well, the well of our own collective unconsciousness.

SCRAPE THE SURFACE OF THE AIR

Lyrics and music: Simon Carrillo, aka Crimson

"My people have been wearing green glasses for so long that most of them think it really is the Emerald City."

L. Frank Baum, Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

In a dreamlike world, a civilization blindly obeys the commands of an invisible and omnipotent guru. He urges everyone to learn to “scratch the surface of the air”—an absurd and illusory gesture that occupies people’s minds, diverts their attention from reality, and prevents them from becoming aware of the manipulation at work.

In this world, even the sharpest minds wear themselves out trying to scratch the surface of the air.

On the fringes of this strange sect, only one person truly succeeds: the poet. Not with his hands, but with his words.

BLOODY CODE

Lyrics and music: Simon Carrillo, aka Crimson

"He who is feared by many must necessarily fear a great deal."

Seneca

The Bloody Code refers to the extremely repressive criminal justice system that developed in England during the “long 18th century.” It made an astonishing number of offenses punishable by death, including many property crimes. The theft of property worth more than 12 pence—one shilling—could thus be punishable by death: a sum equivalent to about 15 euros today.

People tried to control behavior through the fear of severe punishment.

Today, the major powers are increasingly resorting to a strategy of deterrence based on the threat of extremely severe sanctions: economic sanctions and military strikes in the event that a “red line”—sometimes a trivial one—is crossed.

Yet this strategy of megalomania is paradoxical: to be a deterrent, a threat must be credible; but the more extreme the announced punishment, the more costly, dangerous, and therefore uncertain its actual implementation becomes. This strategy of arrogance and contempt actually struggles toconceal the fragility of a system based on domination and the constant display of power, and it is still on full display every day on the front pages of our newspapers.

NAMELESS

Lyrics and music: Simon Carrillo, aka Crimson

“As long as laws and customs continue to create a form of social condemnation that artificially creates hellish conditions in the midst of civilization… as long as ignorance and misery persist on earth, books such as this one may not be without value.”

Victor HUGO, *Les Misérables*

During China’s one-child policy, families who had more than the permitted number of children faced severe penalties. As a result, some of these children were not registered or listed in official records. They were called heihaizi, or “black children.”

They existed, of course, but without any real administrative status, deprived of many rights, as if society refused to acknowledge them. They could not attend school, access health care, obtain identification documents, or have legal employment or social security coverage.

This song is about another form of the “hell” of the Les Misérables , transposed here to Asia: that of those who are present in the world but absent from society. Alive, yet deprived of rights, condemned to that “social damnation” Hugo spoke of.

WITH THE FLOW

Lyrics and music: Simon Carrillo, aka Crimson

RABIES CAUSES DEAFNESS

Lyrics and music: Simon Carrillo, aka Crimson

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your own eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command.” 

George Orwell, 1984

This song envisions a not-too-distant future, in the vein of *1984* or *Black Mirror*—a dystopian world where technology, which is supposed to serve us, gradually ends up taking control of our lives.