Echoes

Album: Surfing The Void (2010)
Charted: 55
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the first single and opening track from British Nu Rave band Klaxons' second album, Surfing The Void. The lyric, "Numberless names within the force of the ninth wave" is a reference to The Ninth Wave, an 1850 painting by Russian marine artist Ivan Aivazovsky depicting sailors clinging to the mast of a submerged ship after a violent sea storm. In this song the line is used within a sci-fi context.
    The lyric might also be referring to these lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's, The Coming of Arthur:
    Wave after wave, each mightier than the last
    Til last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
    And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
    Roaring, and all the wave was in flame.

    Incidentally, the second side of Kate Bush's 1985 album Hounds of Love is entitled "The Ninth Wave," from Tennyson's poem.

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