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the map and the territory (2016)

by haddocks' eyes

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about

This was recorded in Newtown on an electric piano Pete and Heidi lent me. I used to play it most afternoons after I picked up my kids from school. I was trying to remember the kind of music I used to play on my parents' property, in the garage where two ancient pianos were stored. We had no money. We had no electricity. We lived in a caravan. My dad was drunk all the time. Everything was covered in dust and grime. But I remember sitting in front of this thing I could touch, and it would make music, but no-one would hear because we were in the middle of nowhere. I didn't know how to play the piano, but I did. For days. For weeks. For years.
My job was weird. Somehow, I wound up serving coffee and snacks to incredibly important people wearing my weird archaic white uniform with gold crowns. I fell into this job and would often jolt awake performing its ritualistic, tradition-bound service. ‘What am I doing?’ I would ask myself. ‘I used to be in a punk band… now I am opening doors for the Queen of Denmark and heating up soup for the Duchess of Cornwall.’ But you gotta pay bills. You gotta do the best you can.
It drove me mad. Literally. Like, I ended up drinking all the time until I tried to kill myself and ended up in a psych ward. And then rehab.
The photo is of my son standing on a rock on my parents’ property. I imagine he looks a lot like I used to look as a kid. only I had less friends. The title comes from a Michel Houllebec novel that I liked about an artist who did paintings of maps. Which is what I do too, but with music.
When I got out of rehab in 2018 they put me in a re-entry house in Eagle Vale. Which is like outer outer Sydney. I was on my own in weird suburbia in a weird weatherboard suburban house.
I remember the first weekend I was there lying on the couch looking out the open front door looking at the Tongans next door barbecuing a pig and listening to this on my phone I hadn’t been allowed for 18 months. For the first time in a year and a half I could do what I wanted. My freedoms had been returned. All I did, though, was listen to some strange music I couldn’t remember recording when I was deep in the depths of whatever shit it was I had spent years of therapy trying to climb out of. But the sun was shining. And the music reminded me of me, even though the me reminding me was drowned in the depths of psychosis. It was perfect. I fell asleep and dreamt I was a boy again. I dreamt I never made all the mistakes I did, and, for a moment, I thought everything would be alright
This is easily the best thing I have ever made. Hopefully, they will play it at my funeral.

credits

released December 25, 2016

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haddocks' eyes Sydney, Australia

haddocks' eyes is the main musical outlet for Sydney-based song-writer/composer Benjow/Douglas MacKay in the years 2015+. It is also the main archival dumping ground for various projects recorded before this.

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