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    In double gatefold digipack with 12 page full colour lyrics booklet containing beautiful photography by Sarah Joy, Rolfe Horn and Steve Squires.

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about

A song about this history of the printed word.

lyrics

Ancient parchment, hand-written word
Crumbling edges, handle with care
The ink is faded, the vellum’s long dry
A journey of words taking us back in time

Waiting and lasting hoping the years will be kind

Educated scholars share what they’ve learned
With care and patience they copy the scriptures
All you can hear once the ink pots are filled
is the quiet scraping and scratching of quills

He learned from the master of playing cards
Then the idea came like a ray of light

A revolution in printed word
An idea that changed the world
The spread of ideals the spread of ideas
And idea that changed the world. Did he mean to change the world?

Heaving wooden machine, lowered and raised
He’s setting the type, to coin a phrase
Quires, reams and bales devoured and changed
into three-thousand, six-hundred pages a day

Then clattering keys, the noise and speed
As the ribbons fly the letters seem to breed
The carriage returns, coming back for more
Then charges again, an unstoppable force

The power of words, the power of knowledge and dissemination
Bibles and books, newspapers posters
As libraries grow, mass education for the illiterate masses
A revolution in printed word

So now we gorge ourselves on letters on bright-lit screen
And blog them out again for our like-minded friends to read
Re-use, recycle, all disposable

I’ve a machine in my hand a thousand times faster than the bombe that broke enigma’s code
I could use it to read every book ever written
But I use it to look at pictures of kittens and play mind-numbing, sweet-crushing games

A revolution in printed word
An idea that changed the world
The spread of ideals the spread of ideas
An idea that changed the world. Did he mean to change the world?
An idea that could forever change the world

credits

from Everything Beautiful In Time, released December 6, 2015
Ben Hartley: drums
David Addis: guitars
John Murphy: keyboards, murphatron and BVs
Michael Whiteman: bass, organ, vocals
Ella Lloyd: flute

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I Am The Manic Whale Reading, UK

We are a progressive rock band from Reading & London, UK. 3rd album out now.

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