OFSEN: NO NOISE
IS OUT.

Atmospheric vinyl crackle over a moody upright bassline.

Distant, muffled sirens fade into a steady drum break.

Navigating the asphalt veins of a dying district

Redevelopment projects making the history simplistic

Corporate architecture erasing every local landmark

Evicting the families left wandering in the dark

Urban sprawl devouring the local heritage

I’m tracing the geometry of our wreckage

Polysyllabic promises from the mayor’s office

While the working class counts the losses

Gentrified blocks look like polished teeth¹

Hiding the rot and the struggle underneath

They’re painting over the struggle with beige

Flipping the neighborhood like a cheap page

Systemic hypocrisy in every new high-rise

I see the displacement through tired eyes

The landscape shifting while I’m stuck in low gear

Everything we built is starting to disappear

(Ooh, the glass is cold)

I’m driving through the ghost of us

Watching the halogen glare turn to dust

The map doesn’t lead back to your heart

(Everything falls apart)

Just the engine and the rain

Same city, different kind of pain

My chest feels like a boarded-up pharmacy²

A hollowed vessel in this shifting economy

The cost of living rising while my pulse slows

I’m paying for the debt that the absence owes

Accountability is a heavy burden to carry

Between the man I was and the one I bury

Vulnerability is the only currency I have left

In a world defined by systemic theft³

I miss the way your name felt like sanctuary

Now it’s a footnote, cold and temporary

Like these brick walls getting blasted with sand

I’m a stranger in my own native land

Looking at my reflection in the side window

Waiting for the wind of change to blow

But the air is heavy with the scent of wet oil

And the roots are dying in the poisoned soil

(Ooh, the glass is cold)

I’m driving through the ghost of us

Watching the halogen glare turn to dust

The map doesn’t lead back to your heart

(Everything falls apart)

Just the engine and the rain

Same city, different kind of pain

Music strips back to just the bass and a snare.

Isolation in the slow lane

(So quiet now)

The pavement keeps stretching out

(Nowhere to turn)

Fading into the gray

(Just gray)

Fade out with the sound of rain on metal.

(Ooh)

(It is a long way down)

Obsidian marble cold under the palm¹

Watching the district lose its calm

Architecture of a slow-motion collapse

Buried in the fine print of the maps

The cost of the view is a quiet erosion

Waiting for the valve to hit the explosion

Velour curtains hide the street corner heat

Systemic debt in every rhythmic beat

I taste the copper in the filtered air

Grandeur built on a foundation of despair²

Bureaucrats counting the calories of the poor

While I watch the tide reach the fourth floor

Pristine porcelain plates, tectonic plates shifting

Luxury tax on the soul, currency lifting

Institutional rot in the filtered ventilation

Calculating the trauma of the whole nation

The floorboards are vibrating low

Nowhere else for the weight to go

(Heavy weight)

Everything feels paper thin

Waiting for the city to cave in

(Cave in)

Polished zinc reflects a hollowed-out economy

Distant sirens playing a discordant symphony

The velvet rope is just a decorative wire

Kept in place by a structural fire

Glass walls make the isolation feel total

Names of the fallen in the fine print modal

I am sipping on the silence of the top tier

While the engine room burns in the atmosphere

The penthouse is a fortress of selective hearing

While the base of the tower is disappearing

Geopolitical tremors in the crystal stemware³

The weight of the world is too much to bear

The floorboards are vibrating low

Nowhere else for the weight to go

(Heavy weight)

Everything feels paper thin

Waiting for the city to cave in

(Cave in)

(The floorboards are vibrating)

(Vibrating low)

(Nowhere else to go)

Just a long way down

Sub-bass holds. Jazz percussion thins out. Tape stops.