The Canadian post-rock music scene is infamous for having taped monologs or other found voices mixed into their songs. Godspeed You Black Emperor does this very, very frequently to add more dimensions to their music, or to make sure they have your attention which can sometimes wane in slower/dull areas of their songs. Bands like A Silver Mt. Zion, One-Speed Bike, and the non-Canadian Mogwai, along with many others, have all done the monolog route on the majority of their albums; thus defining the taped monologs as part of post-rock scene, and more importantly the Canadian scene.

However, I have never heard this done as well as on a full track that was completely devoted to this concept. This track exists as the second to last song on the double disc release “telegraphs in negative / mouths trapped in static” by the Canadian collective set fire to flames.

The song is titled "Mouths Trapped In Static" and that title does, in fact, sum up the whole thing very nicely: the track consists of a hijacked telephone conversation between two people, a man and a women, with an omnipresent static spewing from the intercepted transmission at all times. Sometimes this static over takes the voices and for a brief amount of time, any where from two to ten seconds, the conversation is completely cut out, leaving only dead air.

On one end of the line a man sounds completely worn out. Behind him there are people talking in the distance, making it seem as if the phone call is being made during a lunch break or something of that nature. At the other end of the line an extremely lonely sounding woman is very happy to be talking to the worn out man. She sounds incredibly innocent and sincere with every word.

Woman: Can you talk where you are?

Man: Yeah.

Woman: Who’s there?

Man: Satellite truck. No, I can talk.

Woman: Is anyone else there?

Man: No.

Woman: Hang on.

Man: Oh man. [ sigh ]

Woman: You’re really tired, I know, you sound just awful. [ pause ] I love you.

Man: I love you too. [ pause ] I don’t want to be here. I want to be with you.

[ transmission cuts off ]

Woman: I was sitting in bed.

Man: Yeah.

Woman: And I was kind of day dreaming.

Man: Mmhmm.

Woman: And I was remembering...umm...I don’t know, I was just remembering all sorts of things.

Man: Like what?

Woman: I was remembering when you came and saw me after the collection.

Man: Yeah.

Woman: And you just walked in the door.

Man: Yeah.

Woman: And dropped everything.

Man: Yeah.

Woman: I was just remembering that. I haven’t thought about that for a long time.

Man: Yeah.

Woman: And how amazing that was.

Man: Yeah. Well…

Woman: Do you have to hang up?

Man: No, not at all. I’m not gonna hang up with you talking like that. [ slight laugh ] Umm…

Woman: Is anyone else near you?

Man: Nah, they aren’t paying attention to me. But…

[ transmission cuts ]

Woman: Can’t you talk to me for as long as you can talk to me or do you have to go?

Man: No, no, I can talk to you for as long as you want.

Woman: I want to talk to you.

[ transmission cuts ]

Woman: I miss you. Isn’t it amazing how much I miss you?

Man: Well...

Woman: And how much I feel like my body needs to be against yours?

Man: Well…I [ cuts ] feeling.

Woman: That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing that it’s mutual.

Man: Yeah.

Woman: You know what I was thinking today?

Man: What?

Woman: We’re the luckiest people in the world because this is just gonna get [ cuts ] stronger and stronger as [ cuts ] and on and on...

Man: It is.

[ silence ]

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