Nonsense In Extensia

The Fiery Furnaces “Quay Cur”/”Straight Street” (Live on East Village Radio, 6/26/04) – This is a solo acoustic recording taken from Eleanor Friedberger’s appearance on the radio program “Gay Beach” on East Village Radio from only a few weeks ago. Eleanor only plays the slow acoustic section of “Quay Cur,” and explains to the DJ that that part of the song is mostly in Inuit. At the time, I had no idea that it wasn’t in English – I had just assumed that she was mumbling!

Thanks to Grant Balfour, I have come upon this excerpt from Richard Hakluyt’s Voyages in Search of The North-West Passage, which includes a glossary containing nearly all of the Inuit words included in the lyrics. It seems that this book was very likely a source of inspiration for the song in general.

This is a basic English translation of the Inuit passage:

half hour sandglass / seven saker round shot/ ice for the moonshine / and chichsaneg / kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, don’t say no / tie tight my coat /

in comes the fog / fallen down in the sea, go fetch / look yonder / get out my knife / I mean no harm, I mean no harm / weave us on shore / give it, give it to me / will you have / and I gave a bracelet / kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, don’t say no / tie tight my coat / in comes the fog / fallen down in the sea, go fetch

“Chichsaneg” is the only word that I cannot find anywhere online – my guess is that it is some kind of food or beverage. Also, I am not sure if a “sasobneg” is strictly defined as being a bracelet. I suspect that it may be a reference to the lost locket from the beginning of the song.

For more detailed analysis of “Quay Cur” (and very soon, the entirety of Blueberry Boat), I strongly recommend visiting Clap Clap Blog frequently over the next few weeks.

(Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Spizzazzz ‘s 40 Days Of Spizz Blends is currently in progress, with each new day bringing us a brand new homemade mash-up courtesy of E Crunk. So far, this highly ambitious project has yielded some nice material, including remixes of Trick Daddy, Ludacris, Usher, and 50 Cent. My favorite, unsurprisingly, is their mix of Ce’Cile “Hot Like We,” which is just ridicously great, especially when the music from “99 Problems” kicks in. Hats off to the Spizzazzz folks for taking the audioblog format in different direction. It’s a bit like the old days of Boom Selection, which was one of my biggest inspirations for starting this blog.