Lyrics
Nought two point three O 1
The god is going down now
Red cup growing on desk
Burnt on digital
Slow
More widening
O two point nineteen
Whilst the engineers trying to pick up bits left and top of screen
Two point one one
Whilst they are amusing themselves
Trying to make politicians or actors look funny or better
According to their present or ingrained past beliefs 2
Two point O six
Good idea for war history programme
Torn off bits of pictures of barbed wire
One point four nine
One point four nine eight
Distilled mug art
Digital distilled altered art
Distilled cut off screen
Digitalled by mugs 3
One point O seven three
Distilling mugs alter top of heads and make them nasty like
One point O five
Put in a paper or CD cover
Nought nought point five eight
And give the folks mumps to order with their apple shape
Nought nought six eight
Distilled to order
Faces distilled to order
Digital mug art
Commentary
There are two officially released studio versions of “Distilled Mug Art”. It first appeared on the live/studio hybrid 2G+2 (2002), credited to Mark E. Smith and Ed Blaney. The version on the Rude (All the Time) EP (2005, not to be confused with the 2001 Flitwick 7″ also called Rude (All The Time), which has a different tracklisting) is labelled “mix 15”. There are no significant differences between the tracks.
The lyrics here are transcribed from the MES vocal on the left channel. There is another vocal on the right channel, but I can’t make out what is being said.
The track was originally intended to be included on a CD EP called Present (The Present on some accounts), which was to be issued by Voiceprint but was cancelled for unknown reasons. The other tracks would have been “My Ex-Classmates Kids” and “New Formation Sermon” (both also included on 2G+2). See Fall News, 23 August 2001 and 9 September 2001 (where a catalogue number is given) and then 19 October 2001 for the withdrawal announcement and 28 November 2001 for the news that Voiceprint intended to release the EP “in a very different format”.
The Track Record characterises the track as “an acoustic strumalong… an attack against the computer manipulation of faces.” bzfgt, on annotatedfall.doomby.com, agreed that the theme was “the digital manipulation of images”, but disputed the “attack” interpretation. I agree – the lyrics don’t really contain much by way of “attack” at all. On the other hand, bzfgt also thought there was something of the ideas of the philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin in the lyrics, which seems wildly implausible.
It is possible to discern three different meanings of “mug” in the lyrics. “Mug” as in cup, “mug” as in face, and “mug” as in “easily fooled”.
Footnotes
- I’ve transcribed all the numbers in the lyrics as words. ↩︎
- An echo here of the lyrics to Captain Beefheart’s “Bill’s Corpse”, from Trout Mask Replica: “Various species grouped together/ According to their past beliefs / The only way they ever all got together / Was not in love but shameful grief” (credit to annotatedfall.doomby.com user @Hexan Blumenthal, who pointed this out in comment #4, 4 January 2019). ↩︎
- The old Lyrics Parade (incorporated into thefall.org and retained by bzfgt for annotatedfall.doomby.com) had “digital’d”, but I prefer “digitalled” instead. It’s not really a word either way, but I think my rendition looks grammatically correct or at least aesthetically nicer. I suppose it means “computerised” or “rendered digitally”. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Distilled Mug Art” [Archived]
- The Fall (2002). 2G+2. CD. Action Records: TAKE18CD. [Discogs]
- The Fall (2005). Rude (All The Time) EP. Hip Priest: HIPP005CD [Discogs]
- Fall News, 23 August 2001. “The new EP “PRESENT” will be out soon on Voiceprint” [Archived]
- Fall News, 9 September 2001. “The new EP “PRESENT” will be out soon on Voiceprint (COGVP128CD)” [Archived]
- Fall News: 19 October 2001. “Apparently the EP The Present has been withdrawn” [Archived]
- Fall News: 28 November 2001. “Voiceprint will release this EP after all “in a very different form.”” [Archived]
- The Fall Online Forum: “Present”
- The Track Record: “Distilled Mug Art”