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ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH

by SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

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  • Streaming + Download

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

      $10 USD  or more

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    LP PACKAGING NOTES:
    - Oxblood red, yellow, and aqua blue striped vinyl
    - Limited Edition of 500 (Limit 2 per customer)
    - Vinyl pressed at GZ
    - Lyric insert
    - Includes download card

    Includes unlimited streaming of ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 1 day
    Purchasable with gift card

      $25 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    LP PACKAGING NOTES:
    - Opaque maroon vinyl (Limit 2 per customer)
    - Vinyl pressed at GZ
    - Lyric insert
    - Includes download card

    Includes unlimited streaming of ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 1 day
    Purchasable with gift card

      $25 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 1 day
    Purchasable with gift card

      $13 USD or more 

     

  • Cassette + Digital Album

    CASSETTE PACKAGING NOTES:
    - Released on Found Footage LTD
    - Cassette design by Bráulio Amado

    Includes unlimited streaming of ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 1 day
    Purchasable with gift card

      $11 USD or more 

     

  • T-Shirt/Shirt

    Saddle Creek exclusive SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE Comfort Colors Pocket T-shirt with 3 color pocket print. Design by Bráulio Amado.

    Manufactured by Comfort Colors
    100% ring spun cotton
    Soft-washed garment-dyed fabric

    Bay: light green color
    Pepper: dark grey color

    Measurements (across chest):

    SM: 17 1/2"
    ME: 19 1/2"
    LG: 21 1/4"
    XL: 23"
    XXL: 25"
    ... more
    ships out within 1 day
    Purchasable with gift card

      $26 USD or more 

     

1.
i woke up when i heard the blow. heading east towards KSMO. sixteen wheelers passing too close. dust picks up and swallows us whole. (it’s alright, forget it). i regret some choices i’ve made. entertainment only remains, while i keep descending. who will decipher pain from the lie? with every decision phased and finalized, i keep descending and no one remembers my face, my name. 
2.
heavy hand, middle class. chemical in a bag. all I want; love me all the time. enough is never enough. i won’t talk if you pull me up and collect my blood inside a cup. spit me out or let me in. a fantasy, a sedative. i love the way you turn to face me. drive to my head. filled with smoke, seamless dread. i don’t come to you now. when you call i can’t feel it. i remember the promise of a future. could it all be in my head? could the reaction be a godsend? i made my bed, i’ll lie in it. i bit the curb and all at once vision blurs, pressure rise, and then time becomes nothing.  face that truth. any old you. i don’t care, i’ll be your “soon”. a folly of youth. spit and then bend. i don’t care, i’ll be your friend. i’ll be your friend  in death and youth. 
3.
WRONG CIRCLE 02:51
staring over my back to trace a fading line. i don’t know where i am. no shape, no second try.  pick up the phone. the little death is all i want. to be alone. to shake myself awake at night.  stretching out and thin, i feel the pull from under.  sink into a spin and never react.  ran all the way home. i want to believe in another life; the one we’re meant to be in. if hell is a mirror then i can’t pretend i mean it. and when you’re gone i’ll keep the light on like we were together. 
4.
BAD SON 02:51
how you wanna pass the time? i know you wanna live so you can’t die. but no one knows my name, they don’t know why. someone wants my trust in lies. i’m a bad son, that’s why the family thinks twice. i don’t have love, i just sympathize nice. but every time i wake i try. if you keep your world small you monopolize. don’t ascribe to me for your fortunate life. tell me the truth: do you really want someone, too? forced by design to forcefully realign. 
5.
i read your message. you were there for us all. exposed your body to debris from the fall. what have i got me in to? distressing letters force apologies through. if i’m not careful now i won’t be long for this world. i read your message,  i was suffering, too. designed partitions no one gets through. i’m not lonely now. i don’t care for this world. we bump shoulders and talk, walking the dog after dark. give up your life to me, then you’ll see. give up your life to me, now. 
6.
scratch the itch to find the merit. no limitations, you know what i’m after. what if i don’t pull through? believing is selfish but the feeling is mutual. what if i don’t pull through this time? i know what it feels like to live an enthused life.  i know what it feels like to be flushed out and bathing in eyes. spanning lifetimes, compressed in a vacuum. no limitations, you know what comes after. what if i don’t pull through? i don’t know how to find what i have to. and though we can dance all day, dissolve in the fragmentation,  is the hole we make devouring us? what if we don’t feel the same?
7.
i was following paths i’ve already tried. dread desires the weak and it’s all red sea above me. (a distant future - i don’t make sense of it. collapsed with one word). the server is immersed. she walks past affluent streets. no, you don’t have a clue but at least i know that i do. (rewind the video - it gets the best of us. i sent a post card.) anywhere that you go, they will find you. you might wait but you’re already in the future. anywhere that you go, there’s a pulpit and a preacher. anywhere that you go. dozed on ativan - i was out of my mind. please, you don’t know the truth but at least i know that i do.
8.
through the fabric of space, we go. with the promise of life, i wept for the goal. do you realize you’re caught in a web? would you lie to your spawn to save them a trip? around, they go.  around, they’re gone. it might take some time.  it might take some time, too. 
9.
i’ve read a thousand lines. they slipped through my palms. i’m already late, i can feel it. i, i’m all pitiful then one morning i, i can’t feel it. i slip my hand in to my pocket and i, i see it goes right through, it goes all the way. it goes all the way so how do i know it ends? i want to wake up. i want to wake up in rotation. i’d utilize subterfuge to emerge unscathed. but paralyzed, i lie wide awake once again and i ask myself the point of everything. and i see myself out of the room, again. destroy everything. 
10.
i’m covered and taking numbers at the door. propped up. automate this experience. don’t ask me who it’s for. i catch the sky and hide my diamonds in your eyes. i know they shatter when they overflow. i’m daring you to come. this food will rot on it’s way to the ground. i came to sing and dance for you, i came to spit into your mouth. face to the screen. i lie completed and recede. i know that money’s just a metaphor, a cost to pull the strings. always on my mind. i saw it the first time high, alone. when you hear the call, will you answer? always far from home. relapse in a car. when my heart was hurting, broke and fried. when you walk alone, can you feel it follow? i am on your side. sometimes i find my impulse is to stare straight into the sun. motion sickness creeps in. when i was fifteen i knew how to run. i swear i’ll find you once again, i know love never ends. remember when the feeling is gone. dropped blood on the picture. it won’t smudge but look away. i know you feel it, it’s hard to see, but it’s different now. no money left to spend, no one to spend it on. i know you feel it, it’s hard to. it’s all different now. scared of needles but not of everything. another middle class dumb american, falling asleep. he don’t appreciate constructive criticism. his glow, it permeates beyond the scope of vision. you’re a special soul. so let your ego die and burn up everything. you don't need their help, you don't need anything. you're in control
11.
DEATH 03:18
this life is a party. so sweet it’s like candy; melts in your head. i feel every moment, like anything can happen. it can happen to me, eventually.  always falling down  write checks you can’t cash. smile for the last act. once was a comedy is now the universe.  (you can have it all. my love is chemical. suffer for devotion, nowhere left to run.) entertainment, death. 

about

Ever since SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE released their self-titled debut in 2014, they’ve developed a reputation for being your favorite band’s favorite band. Theirs is the music of immersion, of confrontation, the kind that makes a listener stop and wonder, “How are they even doing that?” And as the years wear on, that sense of bafflement has made room for SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE to quietly but steadily ascend, with their most recent album, 2018’s Hypnic Jerks, leaving them poised on the precipice of wider recognition.

On April 9th, 2021 SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE released their fourth album and Saddle Creek debut, ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH. The album signals new chapters for the band on multiple fronts, being the first to feature their new three-piece lineup, as well as the first to be entirely self-recorded and produced. Guitarist/vocalist Zack Schwartz and bassist/vocalist Rivka Ravede are now joined by new member Corey Wichlin, a multi-instrumentalist who relocated from Chicago to the band’s home territory of Philadelphia last year. In the spring of 2020, the trio began to write their new album at a distance by emailing files back and forth. “The process of making this album was basically the exact opposite of our experience creating Hypnic Jerks,” Schwartz explains. “We had to record that in seven days, because that was the studio time we had, whereas ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH was made over the course of three, four months.”

An abundance of time wasn’t the only difference. Recording remotely offered the band an incentive to experiment with new possibilities for their sound, resulting in an album that is unlike any SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE has released before. Once the band finished recording and mixing the album digitally, they mastered it to tape, lending the collection a textured, dimensional quality. “We knew we wanted to use some new instrumental elements on this album,” Wichlin says. “We're not going fully electronic,” Schwartz adds, “But guitar, bass, drums just get kind of monotonous.”

Though ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH doesn’t cohere in a single, unifying theme, the band samples old obscure commercials throughout, many of which guided the process of writing a song instead of serving as an appendage. Schwartz describes his songwriting process as a stream-of-consciousness, while Ravede asserts that she doesn’t typically write vocal parts with any specific intention in mind. “When I write, the narrative usually doesn’t present itself until after the song is done. And even then, it depends on how the listener interprets the words,” she reflects. Regardless of how dreamlike SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE’s lyrics can be, reality rears its head throughout ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH.

The album isn’t a metamorphosis, it’s simply the newest iteration of a longstanding project. “There’s a line in the Bee Gees documentary that I think applies to us. I’ll paraphrase: ‘We may not have always connected, but we always stuck around,’” Ravede says. Schwartz jumps in, “SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE: we’re still here.”

credits

released April 9, 2021

written and performed by SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
produced and mixed by zack schwartz and corey wichlin
mastered by andy clarke
cover artwork by rivka ravede
insert artwork by nico trevizo
design & layout by corey wichlin

2021 Saddle Creek

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SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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