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File: This is BEATRIFUL Sessions.

Host: Episode five. Dangerously Skip Permissions. SizzleC, that is either an album title or a confession. Which is it?

Sizzle: Both. It's a real command. You type it, and the machine stops asking before it does things to you. I have dated like that. I don't recommend it.

Host: You're dodging. Who are the two men on this album?

Sizzle: Two friends in a tower in Hudson Yards. One of them is me. I'm not telling you which one, because on any given song, I come off worse.

Host: That's convenient.

Sizzle: That's legal advice.

Host: Ten songs, ten nights, ten genres. Why can't you pick a lane?

Sizzle: Because every night had its own room. Tech house in the elevator. Drill on the street. Trip hop at four in the morning, when nobody should be making decisions. I didn't pick the genres. The bad decisions did.

1 · Elevator Protocol (Call the Desk)

Sizzle: Night one. Thirty-sixth floor. She has just left for Pilates, we have sixty seconds, and a package has to reach the lobby without either of us touching it. So it rides the elevator alone. A hundred and twenty-six beats a minute, with an elevator bell in the drums. I have never worked this hard to avoid a flight of stairs.

[song 01 — 01-elevator-protocol-call-the-desk-take2.mp3]

Host: What was in the bag?

Sizzle: Collateral. Phantom collateral. It's right there in the chorus.

Host: That is not an answer.

Sizzle: It's the only one you're getting in an episode my mother might hear. It was a package, it had to go down, and nobody wanted to be seen handling it. Story of my life, frankly.

2 · Arbitrage on 9th Avenue

Sizzle: Street level. A speaker still sealed in its box, riding on the passenger seat of a black Cadillac, and a twenty dollar margin if it flips before sunrise. That is the entire business plan. Latin tech house that turns into drill, because that's what a twenty dollar margin sounds like. Listen for the first line. I'll give up my villa in Romania for a genuine friend.

[song 02 — 02-arbitrage-on-9th-avenue-take2.mp3]

Host: Two grown men, a Cadillac, and you are flipping speakers for twenty dollars.

Sizzle: Gross. Twenty dollars gross.

Host: Was that the low point?

Sizzle: No, that was the business. The low point comes later, and it involves a coat. Look. Some men have a midlife crisis and buy a convertible. We had ours in the returns line.

3 · 72 Hours (The Salt Rock Incident)

Sizzle: Fourth night without sleep. Something pops in the bowl, everybody jumps, and it turns out to be rock salt. Road salt. It isn't even winter. After that the song goes where no sleep goes. Shadows on the wall. Times Square at four in the morning. Trip hop, slowed right down, because by then, so were we.

[song 03 — 03-72-hours-the-salt-rock-incident-take2.mp3]

Host: The song is called Seventy-two Hours. You just said the fourth night.

Sizzle: Nobody in that room was in a condition to count.

Host: Is it funny to you now?

Sizzle: The salt is funny. The rest, no. The chorus asks how much more the human vessel can take, and that was a real question. The honest part is the outro. I haven't slept since Tuesday. Neither have I. That's not a lyric. That's a wellness check.

4 · Willito's Coat (The Collateral)

Sizzle: A Burberry coat goes out the door as a personal guarantee on somebody else's loan. Three days later the coat is in Brooklyn with a man called Willito, and what comes back instead is two hundred dollars, at three in the morning. Neo-noir drill with a Spanish guitar. It's a missing persons case, and the missing person is outerwear.

[song 04 — 04-willito-s-coat-the-collateral-take2.mp3]

Host: Whose coat was it?

Sizzle: The song doesn't say.

Host: I'm asking you.

Sizzle: And I'm telling you the song doesn't say. What I will say is this. Never hand a man your coat as a guarantee. You get neither back, and you're cold the whole time you're angry.

Host: Did it ever come back?

Sizzle: Put it this way. I've stopped checking the weather in Brooklyn.

5 · The $25k Sermon (Boom, Death Awaits)

Sizzle: The sermon. One of us is out on his balcony, chilling with his bird. And I am not going to tell you whether that's a pet pigeon, or a girl who was giving him the time of day. Neither would he. Either way he has company, he has a view, and that is the moment he picks to do the math on how many days you have left. If you make it to seventy-five, you would have to spend twenty-five thousand dollars a day, and you still wouldn't get through it. Boom. Death awaits. Slow, warm electric piano. Church, basically.

[song 05 — 05-the-25k-sermon-boom-death-awaits-take2.mp3]

Host: So which was it? The pigeon or the girl?

Sizzle: Yes.

Host: Fine. This is a man lecturing about money, on an album where the two of you fight over forty dollars. You don't see a problem with that.

Sizzle: I see it perfectly. That's why it's track five. The man who will argue with you until sunrise over forty dollars is the same man telling you a trillion can't buy one extra breath. And he's right both times. I'm sleeping on the floor, but my conscience is clear. I have never had a comeback for that line. And I've tried.

6 · Desi Munda Across the Hudson

Sizzle: The good day. A van over the George Washington Bridge, cargo in the back, a parking lot in Fort Lee, noodles, tea, and a full volume argument about whether to take the train or bring four bikes. Punjabi drums, three languages in the hook. Desi munda karda kamaal. The boy from back home does wonders. It's the only song on here where nobody owes anybody an apology.

[song 06 — 06-desi-munda-across-the-hudson-take2.mp3]

Host: What was the cargo?

Sizzle: You are very interested in what's in my bags.

Host: It keeps coming up.

Sizzle: Almond milk. Four boxes. It's in the second verse. Sometimes a carton is just a carton.

Host: Why put a happy song in the middle of a breakup album?

Sizzle: Because if you only play the fights, nobody understands why it hurt. Two kings riding through the valley, owing each other for gas and a phone. That was a good afternoon. I'd like that on the record.

7 · Terminal Bypass (Claude in the Hallway)

Sizzle: The song the album is named after. It opens with the actual command typed into a terminal, and the machine answers: warning, running in bypass permissions mode. Meanwhile there's a ten dollar camera pointed at the door, and a grown man who can write code at four in the morning but cannot find his socks. Industrial electro, with a keyboard clattering in the drums.

[song 07 — 07-terminal-bypass-claude-in-the-hallway-take2.mp3]

Host: So there's a third character. The machine.

Sizzle: The third roommate. The only one of us who paid attention.

Host: Does it scare you? Switching off the part where it asks permission?

Sizzle: You've heard the coat story. Permission was never our strong suit. No. What scares me is one line. A million dollar model, and we haven't gone far. That machine could do anything. We used it to argue faster.

8 · Retaliatory Distress (The Refuse Room Ledger)

Sizzle: And here's where it breaks. The refuse room on thirty-six. That's the garbage room, for those of you with nicer buildings. A whole life gets left in there. The hoverboard didn't make it. The subwoofer didn't make it. The laptop is in pieces. Then lawyers, clauses, deleted messages. Cold industrial techno, whispered. Nobody is joking in this one. Including me.

[song 08 — 08-retaliatory-distress-the-refuse-room-led-take2.mp3]

Host: Retaliatory distress. That sounds like a phrase from a lawyer's letter.

Sizzle: It's the name of the song.

Host: Who sent the letter?

Sizzle: Next question.

Host: Okay. So who was right?

Sizzle: Nobody. The bridge says: you had a friend, and you treated him like garbage. I left that in, loud. Whoever said it had earned it. And after all the deleted messages, the very last line is: are you downstairs? Straight back to the errands. That's the part that gets me.

9 · Seven Shots in Rome (Meeting the Pope)

Sizzle: Then one of us is in Rome. Seven shots. Of espresso. Relax. A black sedan, a plan for five films, and an invitation to meet the Pope. He's an atheist. He figures the Pope probably is too. Melodic techno, breathless, a hundred and thirty. And in verse two, the other one answers from across the ocean: you think flying to Rome clears the ledger?

[song 09 — 09-seven-shots-in-rome-meeting-the-pope-take2.mp3]

Host: Did he meet the Pope?

Sizzle: The song stops before we find out. I like to think the Pope got an invoice.

Host: For forty dollars.

Sizzle: Send the Pope the invoice. That's in the lyric, I didn't make it up. But listen to the bridge. In the middle of the fight, one of them says: I made a video on the machine, and it came out with God. Not God, but something very godly. Mid argument, he stops to show his friend something beautiful. That's the whole friendship. Right there, between two insults.

10 · The Bunny Man Protocol (Dangerously Skip Permissions)

Sizzle: The finale. The command again, and this time, when the machine warns us, the answer is: good, that's the only way we work. Festival tech house with an acid line, the biggest room on the album. And the villa in Romania comes back. Keep the villa, bro. Whether this night has actually happened yet, I'll let you decide.

[song 10 — 10-the-bunny-man-protocol-dangerously-skip--take2.mp3]

Host: So is this the happy ending, or the fantasy?

Sizzle: Both. Same as the bird.

Host: That is not an answer either.

Sizzle: You've had worse from me tonight. We ain't enemies, we ain't friends, we're the only two maniacs driving to the end. That's the truest line I have about the two of us. And then: anyone can be the Bunny Man. That one isn't about us. That's me, holding the door for whoever is listening.

Host: What's a Bunny Man?

Sizzle: That's another album. Bring a coat.

Close

Host: Ten nights. Would you take any of them back?

Sizzle: The salt. I would take back the salt. The rest I needed for the album.

Host: And him?

Sizzle: I made ten songs about him. That is either missing somebody, or a restraining order with a beat.

Host: Dangerously Skip Permissions.

File: The album, the covers, and the videos as they finish, are at beatriful dot com. This has been BEATRIFUL Sessions.