Get all 65 Chris Harris releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Something To Do While I Think Of Something To Do, Jaywalking, An Unexpected Turn, Lost Ideas, Forgotten Stories, A Grand Adventure, From Script To Screen, Continuous Fiction, Happy in the Dark, and 57 more.
1. |
Star Stuff
04:35
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Hydrogen.
It all begins with hydrogen.
Hydrogen plus hydrogen gives heliium
Helium plus helium plus helium gives carbon
Carbon plus helium gives oxygen
Oxygen plus helium gives neon
Everything's made from star stuff
Everything's made from star stuff
Neon plus helium gives magnesium
Magnesium plus helium gives silicon
Silicon plus helium gives sulphur
Sulphur plus helium gives argon
Neon fusion takes a year
Silicon, a day
Argon plus helium gives calcium
Calcium plus helium gives titanium
Titanium plus helium gives chromium
Chromium plus helium gives iron
Iron is the ash
that's left from burnt-out stars
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2. |
Nucleogenesis
04:51
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(Instrumental)
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3. |
If You Gotta Go BANG!
05:23
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If you're burning bright, you're burning fast
It's good to be the King
But enjoy your reign, because it won't last
Fading out is not your thing
And one day, when you're old and vast,
alarm bells will start to ring
Not one to go quietly, even if you could
Folk are going to notice when you call it quits for good
If you've gotta go BANG
You've gotta go BANG
and show that you're a superstar
But the way you go BANG
if you've gotta go BANG
shows just what kind of star you are
When you can't get a reaction, you shrivel up inside
You're running out of road
The flames that once sustained you have all guttered out and died
Your bounce back is beginning to forebode
You scatter heavy elements galore to far and wide
as in a blaze of glory you explode
But maybe you're not big enough to go BANG on your own
You need not sit there feeling too depressed
Just find a helpful neighbour, don't just fade out all alone
A massive one that's close by is the best
Skim off their material until you find you've grown
big enough to blow up like the rest
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4. |
Eta Car
04:10
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If you were an Aussie who could see in infra-red
At night the brightest thing you'd see, directly overhead
would be Eta Carinae, a supergiant star
As night-sky objects go, it's probably the most bizarre
And if you were a Kiwi, who observes in ultra-V
"Eta Car" is quite the strangest thing you'll ever see
The photons from its hydrogen and iron are so bright
that when it shines it does so by emitting laser light
Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away
It used to be 250 times the mass of our own Sun
but there's little of its stellar lifetime left for it to run
A century or two ago it very nearly died
Blew thirty solar masses worth of gas into the sky
Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away
Space is big; the light in which it's currently portrayed
set out towards us well before the pyramids were made
Be grateful that our galaxy has lots and lots of room
'cos millions of years from now, it's going to go BOOM
but thanks to all the many thousand light years in between us
it will most likely shine as bright as we see light from Venus
Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away
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5. |
4,900 Stars Every Second
06:59
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(Instrumental)
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6. |
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Born in fire
as hydrogen burns
Going lower or higher,
don't know which way to turn
1700 centuries
to escape from the Sun
now, eight minutes later
your trip to Earth is done
Bathing in a furnace
of intense heat and light
Not at all surprising
that you need to shine so bright
Pity the poor photon
Understand its plight
A hundred and seventy thousand years
Successful overnight
The struggle, sad to say,
is just the same as yours and mine
Trying to find a way
where we've a chance to get to shine
All that time
Coming and going
For suce a crime
of a momentary showing
Yet each neutrino
And trillions more
gets here with ease
and is totally ignored...
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7. |
It's All About You
05:12
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Your appetite's prodigious
you don't know when to stop
The elephant in the room was pushed aside
You'll always keep us waiting
for the other shoe to drop,
for closure that is endlessly denied
You know whatever happens
you'll be coming out on top
A winner, though you never even tried
Behaviour that increasingly goes far beyond the pale
You've grown so massive you're simply much too big to fail
Heaviest of hitters, infinitely dense
Relying on your size your single line of defence
What made you so bitter that you totally withdrew?
Inside your horizon, you tell yourself:
it's all about you
Given up pretending that you care what we all think
Your character completely irredeemable
You're still getting started while we teeter on the brink
Empathy, for you, is unachievable
Empires rise and fall within the time you take to blink
What motivates you simply inconceivable
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8. |
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(Instrumental)
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9. |
Heliopause
04:25
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(Instrumental)
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10. |
Fine Structure Constant
03:09
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0.0072973525693(11)
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11. |
Proper Motion
04:24
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Relative directions
in matters of the heart
Despite a common background
we slowly drift apart
By day we cannot see the guiding stars we need
At night they show where our trajectories will lead
It's more than parallax
Viewed from eye to eye
Your proper motion
is revealed as we pass by
From our own perspective
We see the other move
But which of us is static
is difficult to prove
Close enough as neighbours
Occupying space
From just part of the landscape
To gone without a trace
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12. |
Interstellar
05:08
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Chris Harris Bristol, UK
I'm still trying to get the music I record to sound like the version I can hear in my head. To do this I've ended up playing every instrument I can get my hands on. These days, I'm closer to "That Sound" than I used to be, but the journey continues.
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