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File: This is BEATRIFUL Sessions.

Host: Where an album gets to tell its own story. Episode six: All I Wanted Was to Eat My Sushi. It's a double album, twenty songs, so we are taking it in two sittings. Tonight is the first ten, the half called Out There. SizzleC, welcome back.

Sizzle: Thanks. Fair warning, there are no kings in this one. It's two people, six years, seven cities, and one small black dog who turns up in the second half.

Host: The subtitle is The Complete Quarantine Tapes, twenty nineteen to twenty twenty-five.

Sizzle: Right. Every song is one incident, told flat, the way you would tell it to a customs officer. A border. A needle. A corn cob. And the sound changes with the room it happened in. Darkwave in Taipei, industrial in Detroit, trip hop in Seattle, punk on a parquet floor.

Host: Two voices.

Sizzle: Her and him. She has most of the album. He's the low voice she keeps texting. The man in these songs is called Chris, and you can draw your own conclusions.

Host: Where does it start?

Sizzle: With a rule. Don't get attached. That was the only deal. Then nineteen songs break it.

1 · Bury the Skank (Taipei 4 AM)

Sizzle: Taipei, four in the morning, room three two five. A prescription forgotten at the chemist, a key hidden in plastic wrap, chicken rice going cold on a marble slab. She texts from a cab in the rain: exploring, nothing personal. Darkwave, a hundred and eighteen beats a minute, synthesizers straight out of the eighties. Listen for the deal in the chorus.

[song 01 — 01-bury-the-skank-taipei-4-am-take2.mp3]

Host: Don't get attached. Did either of them keep it?

Sizzle: For about one song. It's the opener because everything after it is that deal failing. And there's a line in the bridge I love for how small it is. White pepper on the table, no salt in sight. Just promise that you'll wait for me tonight. That is already attached.

2 · Tunnel to Windsor (400 Renaissance Dr)

Sizzle: Winter, on the border between Detroit and Windsor. She is held at customs while an officer reads every text on her phone. He's across the river at the casino, losing two thousand dollars. Luggage piling up in the sleet, a white S U V, a code word. Industrial E B M, that's electronic body music, hard and mechanical, a hundred and twenty-eight.

[song 02 — 02-tunnel-to-windsor-400-renaissance-dr-take2.mp3]

Host: This is the first emergency.

Sizzle: And the first unanswered call. The whole song is logistics. Where to stand, which car, what time at the steakhouse. He tells her from the hotel it's an easy fix, while he watches his chips bleed away. And then the last three lines are just her. Four hundred Renaissance Drive. I'm freezing out here. Answer your phone.

3 · Truvada Shield (PrEP Protocol)

Sizzle: The first weeks of the virus, in a rental room. He's reading lab papers and stockpiling blue pills in the linen cupboard, next to the green tea, convinced they will keep the fever out. She's painting her nails and ordering delivery. Coldwave, synth punk, a drum machine like a metronome. This is Truvada Shield.

[song 03 — 03-truvada-shield-prep-protocol-take2.mp3]

Host: For the listener: Truvada is an H I V prevention pill.

Sizzle: It is. In those weeks nobody knew anything, and he had read some papers. The song isn't about whether he was right. It's two kinds of fear locked in one room. And she gets the verdict, in a whisper. You say it's prevention. I say it's escape.

4 · Savannah Cat / Syringe Blues

Sizzle: Seattle, the forty-second floor. Three thousand dollars for an empty one bedroom, a spotted Savannah kitten asleep in the bathroom sink, ninety-six protein shakes from the grocery downstairs, and syringes in the bedside drawer. Slow trip hop, a muted trumpet, vinyl dust. He's talking low, late at night.

[song 04 — 04-savannah-cat-syringe-blues-take1.mp3]

Host: She is only on the phone in this one.

Sizzle: A voice down a telephone line. Did you feed the kitten? Did you lock the door? And then the bridge, which is the first time the album says where it's heading. I missed the Docklands. I missed my bathroom. You told me I was crazy. Maybe we both were. Remember the Docklands. Disc two lives there.

5 · Corn Cob Emergency

Sizzle: A summer night. Three whole cobs of corn with butter at half past eight. By midnight, a stabbing pain in the side, and the internet says rupture. A private doctor, a cold ultrasound probe, and the question: did you swallow foreign objects? Glitch punk at a hundred and forty-five. He is certain he's dying. She is eating crisps.

[song 05 — 05-corn-cob-emergency-take2.mp3]

Host: Is he all right?

Sizzle: The scan was clear. That's the last line, and her answer is: I told you so, drink some water. The album needed one song where the near-death experience is pure slapstick, because the other ones aren't funny. Sweet yellow maize is the angel of death. I'm proud of that line.

6 · Simulation Theory (Friedenstrasse 16)

Sizzle: Berlin, the first lockdown. Friedenstrasse sixteen. A frozen pizza on the middle rack at two hundred degrees, a white Fiat circling the park, everything shut on a Sunday. Dreamy synth pop, slow, with eighties pads. This is the calm one. If we stay inside the room, we will never age.

[song 06 — 06-simulation-theory-friedenstrasse-16-take2.mp3]

Host: It sounds almost happy.

Sizzle: It's the thesis of the whole quarantine. Nothing hurts in here, nothing goes astray. When the world stops, two people who are bad at the world get to stop too. It can't last. But for one song, the lockdown is the best thing that ever happened to them.

7 · Brothel on King Street

Sizzle: Melbourne. This is her pitch, in her voice. A licensed parlour on King Street, two hundred thousand to take over the lease. You do the accounting, I manage the girls. A champagne bar up front, private suites in the back, forty grand a week. Sleaze rock, a heavy walking bass, ninety-eight beats a minute.

[song 07 — 07-brothel-on-king-street-take2.mp3]

Host: Is she serious?

Sizzle: Completely. And he answers like an accountant. Run the commercial numbers, look at the spread. It's the first song where money is the real subject. She doesn't want the business. She wants to never ask him for rent again. Never have to beg for a bailout anymore. And the last line is: think about it, Chris.

8 · Zone 2D (Runway Escape)

Sizzle: An airport at dawn, terminal three. She has her papers, a legal file, and fourteen days to beat a travel ban. Then San Francisco, a terminal like a ghost town, a cosmopolitan spilled down her coat, and a black car heading south along the coast. Synth rock at a hundred and thirty-two, a bass guitar driving it. She's running.

[song 08 — 08-zone-2d-runway-escape-take2.mp3]

Host: She makes it.

Sizzle: She makes it through. Zone two D, boarding. But listen to how the bridge ends. Escaped the lockdown, beat the wire, running straight into the fire. Getting out is not the same as getting away.

9 · 27-Gauge Thighs (Air Piano)

Sizzle: The quietest song on the disc. A tower, twenty stories up, harbour lights. Instructions, spoken softly: which needle, what angle, pull back, check, push it slow. Afterwards, fingers move on the bed sheet, playing a piano that isn't there. Dark, slow R and B, seventy-five beats a minute, almost all bass.

[song 09 — 09-27-gauge-thighs-air-piano-take1.mp3]

Host: It's a hard thing to listen to, and it's gentle.

Sizzle: That's why it's here. The tenderest song on the album is about a needle. Hold my hands until the tremors cease. I'm not going to explain it, and I'm not going to excuse it. Two broken spirits living in a phone. That was the truth of that room, and the song just reports it.

10 · All I Wanted Was to Eat My Sushi

Sizzle: The title track. Melbourne, the Eastern Freeway, curfew at eight. A hundred and forty in the lane, blue lights in the mirror, sushi scattered across the road, and a roadside test. It's set against a real freeway crash that was on the six o'clock news there that season. Glitch hop, heavy bass. And the smallest wish on the whole album.

[song 10 — 10-all-i-wanted-was-to-eat-my-sushi-take1.mp3]

Host: All I wanted was to eat my sushi.

Sizzle: You wrecked my car. Six years, seven cities, borders, needles, quarantines, and the line she comes out with is about dinner. That's why it's the title. It's the smallest wish, and it still got wrecked.

Close

Host: That's disc one. Ten songs out in the world. What changes in the second half?

Sizzle: The doors close. Disc two is called Locked In. Hotel quarantine, a five kilometre bubble, an empty apartment in a tower. And a dog arrives. She's the third voice on the album, and frankly the most sensible.

Host: All I Wanted Was to Eat My Sushi, disc one. Disc two is the next episode.

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