(Image by Julia Rubunic)
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10 years ago, we were just like all other New Yorkers: caught up in our heads, trying to live consciously but a little too comfortable in the knowledge of our own security. We loved our city and hated it, spending our days working and our nights playing music and making the scene.
Then, the seemingly impossible happened. We were under attack. At first, none of us knew why, or by whom. All we knew was that someone had come down on us, hard, and we were in pain. In the weeks after the twin towers fell, while the air still reeked of ashes and asbestos and normal life hung suspended in a kind of woozy hangover, we wrote this song. We performed it a few times as Brave New Girl, then when Aram and Dunia moved to LA and formed Dubistry with Matt, we played it a bunch out there.
We’ve never recorded “Can You Tell” until now. We’re putting it out as a commemoration — not of death and destruction, or even of bravery and stoicism in the face of adversity, but rather as a commemoration of our own fear, confusion and ultimate resilience. We’re making it freely available under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike license, which means we want people to share it, remix it, mash it up, and make it their own. In a few months, we’ll also include it on our new album, which we’re polishing up in the studio.
We’d like to personally thank our friends who shared those days with us, including Jake Myers, Harry Bruinius, Maryam Dilakian, Phil DeJean, Naimah Hakeem, and the greatly-missed Ariane “Ari-Up” Forster. We’d also like to thank the friends who contributed their music to this track, including Gene Lewin, Felice Rosser, Vivien Goldman, and Maxine Walters.