We’ve recorded a new version of ‘The Ice Sculptor’ – one of the songs from our acoustic first album Common Knowledge. The new track has an expanded studio arrangement – rather than just being a rendition of what we can perform live in the duo – and a reworked lyric.
The new version of the song was recorded as a experiment in trying out new equipment and techniques prior to recording the next album.
We’re offering the full track as a high quality download in a variety of formats, which you can burn to CD or play from your computer or portable audio device. To download it, visit our download and CD shop. Like all our downloads, this is available on a pay-what-you-like basis – there is no minimum.
Lyric Reworking
Helen: “The original version of this song featured an ice sculptor carving a figurine of an angel from ice, but after performing the song for some time I became uncomfortable with the fact that it was somewhat twee, and also that the song could possibly be misconstrued as having religious undertones.
“The theme of the song is impermanence, and I felt that the image of an angel – an immortal – contradicted this idea. So, in the new version, the figures that the sculptor is carving have been changed to isotopes of carbon. The ‘isotopes’ lyric was initially tried out on a whim, but actually I feel this relates better to the idea of mortality and decay. Now the song is centred around the radioactive decay of carbon-14, and the impermanence of carbon-based lifeforms.
“It still remains, as it was originally intended to be, a defence of and tribute to all practitioners of performance art.”
You can read the reworked lyric here.
Cover Art
The cover picture is a 3D virtual model of a fanstasy-ice-sculpture carbon-14 atom in the process of decaying, which was built by Tom in the virtual world Second Life during an extended moment of extreme geekiness. In this instance the beta particle being emitted by the nucleus is depicted by a blue dragonfly, and all the other particles have dragonflies on them too, which may not strictly be atomically correct.
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