Death to All Actors

by time for dreams

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

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

Purchasable with gift card

$2 AUD or more

about

Written pre-covid, the third single from Time for Dreams upcoming album Life of the Inhabitant: ‘Death to All Actors’ is a pandemic themed song about rituals, the fear of death and plagues.

The duo's luminous Amanda Roff muses, “when I wrote the song I was thinking of Norman Mailer’s “Ancient Evenings” where at one point in the afterlife you must swim through a river of actual human shit”.

‘Death to All Actors’ reflects on the shift of actors' societal status historically, Roff explains, “Does anyone really trust actors? Society seems to idolise them now, but there was a time they couldn’t even be buried in consecrated ground. Travelling groups of actors were suspected super spreaders of the plague from city to city.”

‘Death to All Actors’ is a triumph of balance - beautiful sub bass thuds softly, dusted in Carlyon’s soft signature post punk guitar while Amanda’s vocals and stories sit like crystal, “musically Death to All Actors is the most cheerful song on the record - a snaky beat that opens out into a rather ecstatic instrumental interlude about enjoying life while you can,” says Roff.

To celebrate the release of Death to All Actors the band collaborated with bio-chemical art director Lichen Kelp. Lichen makes lurid liquid landscapes with plant matter, ice, water and domestic chemical ingredients that investigate the materiality of process.

DTAA is situated lyrically in the heightened materiality of life when death is looming, a song written before covid but with a strong plague theme – disease, corruption of flesh and bacteria, in contrast to the idea of the clean and clear spirit world beyond this realm. Real dirt, ash, shit, cracked and calloused hands working on splintered oars, insect bites, sores, fever, contagion, decomposition, bodily fluids, poison and fungus, all these things I imagine being considered fondly when one is leaving the world.

Lichen’s practice creates a performative time period of lush visual decay, where soft living plants saturate and disintegrate in technicolour detail. Filming the processes closely allowed us to revel in the tiny details of bubbles bursting, ice melting, life wilting, emphasizing the protean vigour of the materials. Lichen made several floating, floral paintings which were filmed by Thomas Hyland in close-up while the chemical processes flowed and festered. Lichen conducted the movements of various plants within the landscapes to create an erotic choreography of transition.

lyrics

Ring the bell
Now the guests are leaving
Draw the veil
On the ancient evening
Scorpion
Accelerates your breathing

That’s my gift to you-
Sting

For the sake of the city, we buried the actors outside the walls
No one was really sure
Where they’d been
We burned their clothes in an empty boat
And divided up their things
The boatman sings:
Ring the bell
Now the guests are leaving
Draw the veil
On the ancient evening
You can’t forget the taste, you can’t forget the feeling

That’s my gift to you-
Sting

credits

released April 22, 2021
Written and performed by Time For Dreams
(Amanda Roff & Tom Carlyon).
Produced by Tom Carlyon.
Mixed at Super Melody World
in the Macedon Ranges by James Cecil & Tom Carlyon,
at Phaedra Studios in Coburg.
Mastered by Rashad Becker at Clunk Studio, Berlin.
Single cover art by Luke Fraser/AHR+
Featuring a video still by Thomas Hyland & Lichen Kelp

license

about

time for dreams Melbourne, Australia

Amanda Roff & Tom Carlyon are Time For Dreams, an Australian duo making bleak, smoky, dehydrated bad-dream pop. Their music is at once stark and lush, vivid and hazy.
Their work has a strong fantasy aspect and speaks to the existence of multiple realities. A perfect soundtrack for the end of the world. ... more

contact / help

Contact time for dreams

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like time for dreams, you may also like:

Orchid Underneath
by Jane Paknia

Delightfully unpredictable debut from a New York electronic producer and composer with backgrounds in psychedelic rock, jazz, and indie pop. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 25, 2024
go to album
Real Home
by Kiran Leonard

An imaginative and experimentalist yet accessible record of acoustic prog from London-based artist Kiran Leonard. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 23, 2024
go to album
Touched by the Stuff
by Motorists

Toronto rivals San Francisco as the North American capital of jangle pop as evidenced by this new record of sunny jams from the Motorists. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 16, 2024
go to album
Dream Talk
by Still Corners

Blissfully narcotic dream-pop inspired by real dreams. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 6, 2024
go to album
Macro
by Brijean

Brijean are back! Uptempo space disco grooves dusted with soul and R&B on the duo’s latest masterpiece. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 3, 2024
go to album
Head X'Change
by Scythe

Guitars sparkle like distant constellations on the latest from Scythe, who delivers dazzling space rock on their latest LP. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 3, 2024
go to album
Io tu il loro
by Klaus Johann Grobe

Pivoting from German to English, disco to soft rock, the groovy Swiss duo branch out on their first album in six years. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 28, 2024
go to album