Originally released on Haggard Beast in Sept 2009, this is a 7" (Prince) Nifty and Tradition split. "Time - Abridged (45rpm)" is a song about time and change. It was mostly written during the 2008 Obama v Clinton US Democratic Party primaries. The sample in the middle of the tune is Obama's hyperbolic acceptance of the nomination speech where he attempts to sear a moment in time and in our cultural memories. Interestingly, he speaks of it out of time, as if were already a memory:
"... this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time..."
I suppose the song is a skeptical response to Obama's claims. That his notion of change – change as a slogan – is a toothless dream. What we get is more of the same. The song's contention is that change is perhaps a whole new way of looking at things, shifting the mind the way the song drifts through different rhythmic feels and harmonic modulations, and that perhaps we need to be looking very far back into our histories for ways of redifining our concepts of time and change.
On the flip side of this 7"are 2 songs by Tradtion (33rpm):
Affectations Of The Blind Man and Summer Sheets
You can hear that side here:
tradition.bandcamp.com/album/split-7-w-nifty-2009