Telepath
Running time	1:32
Appears on	Tomorrow's Harvest

Comments

• Telepathy is the supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses. It was a major field of research for scientists during the early 20th century and into the Cold War. Upton Sinclair also conducted telepathy experiments in the '30s.

• The audio distortions on the vocals of this track may have been modeled after the reported auditory distortions present in Microwave auditory effect , which was a facet of telepathy research during the Cold War. This auditory phenomenon was used to transmit sounds directly from a microwave emitter into the human brain. Researchers described that the auditory distortions inherent to this process caused "the sounds [to resemble] those emitted by persons with an artificial voice box."
• When played backward, the voice counting in the track can be heard to say "This is (is) the end of the Earth.. for now."
• Narratively, in sticking with the theme of cycles on the album, this track follows the evolution or mutation of a new civilization on Earth following the thawing of the planet from an artificial nuclear ice age ("White Cyclosa", who also fail (or "Collapse") due to an ice-age, as presented in "Cold Earth", the next track on the album. This implies cycles operating at multiple scales, that of the death-rebirth cycle of civilizations, and perhaps that of individual humans as in some other religious or spiritual beliefs, of cyclical weather patterns, and of the civilization itself, which was born out of an ice age ("Jacquard Causeway") and died from an ice age ("Cold Earth").

Samples / Lyrics

0:04 "Testing. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. (oops) Up and down, quite a thing [while I'm counting?]." (background) six, six, nine.

0:20: (Second voice) "On repeat. Give me a count." (also sounds like "you can't")

0:23 "The stuff that they know, the one on the right and then turn it up, while I'm counting. One... three, four, fi-ive, six, seven, eight, through ni- (garbled)"

0:43: (Second voice) "It's too loud." (Pitched down) "Plaid."

0:45 "Well, this is quite pleasant. Let's play it back and see what it sounds like."

(Second and third voice) "Could I get the one voice?", "Nervous!", "Don't be nervous."

"One, two, three, four, fi-ive, six, six, seven."

• After the last number you can hear a quiet "listen" (same as in "Reach for the Dead").

Trivia

• In one sequence, the number six is repeated in the background, the result sounding more like "666".
• Madonna’s “Live to Tell” intro at .75x sounds like "Telepath".