Naarm/Melbourne experimental queer post-punk outfit bodies of divine infinite and eternal spirit (AKA bodies), is the project of daniel ward (vocals, guitar), Aldo Thomas (vocals, guitar, saxophone), Ruby Lee (drums, drum machine, sampler), Ben Sendy-Smithers (bass), and a revolving door of collaborators and performers. The group have operated as an improvisational project for almost ten years, self-releasing almost as many demos, EPs and albums in that time. With a proclivity for lengthy, intuitive cuts guided by a desire and search for transcendental states of experience, the group have never played the same set live twice and believe in songs that have the potential for both monotonous repetition and abrupt change.
Despite their sheer volume of music the group have shared over the years, bodies consider all the songs i know about fire their first official album, recorded at a farm on a property run only on solar power (unexpectedly), allowing them to record just one instrument at a time – near the antithesis of how they would usually operate as a band. Each track on the album serves as a prayer or meditation on a particular emotion (more accurately, a fire) and the labelled ideas we have on sensorial states.
all the songs i know about fire speaks to fire in a sense not too dissimilar to William Blake’s conception; fire as the inherent passion, creativity, vibrancy, violence, eccentricity, desire and energy within all things. In other words, spirit; the same vibrancy that moralistic bureaucracies seek to suppress (sometimes) in fear of the world’s, and hence the human’s, infinite nature. It speaks from a pantheistic position, focussing on spirit as the infinite potential of all things. Heaven as earth. Enlightenment as consciousness. Through this, it is an album in devotion to the unending circle of time, and a prayer for precious attention. An ode to temporality and impermanence and conviction alike.
ward adds, “When writing the poems [for the album], I was interested in the philosophical link between this framework of understanding the world and transgenderism; as both a shared ecology of existence and a local active disruption of bureaucratic order, which is to say it is unowned (punk) and owning it (punk). From here, each song acts as a prayer or ritual on certain fires, speaking to desire, fear, love, death, time, mysteries.”
Release: October 6th, 2023, Dinosaur City Records