Nothing Lasts... But Nothing Is Lost

Nothing Lasts ... But Nothing is Lost is a 2005 album by Shpongle. It is the project's third and was announced as their last studio album, though the duo has since released a fourth. Like the previous two albums, it features many live musicians and vocalists in combination with computer-generated sounds and spoken-word samples. Stylistically the album can be described as a fusion of world music, intelligent dance music, and psychedelic trance. It is dedicated to the memory of author and psychedelic researcher Terence McKenna, whose voice and ideas are used throughout the album. The tracks flow together continuously without any break.

Track listing

1. "Botanical Dimensions" – 4:37
2. "Outer Shpongolia" – 2:33
3. "Levitation Nation" – 3:40
4. "Periscopes of Consciousness" – 1:54
5. "Schmaltz Herring" – 2:21
6. "Nothing Lasts ..." – 4:28
7. "Shnitzled in the Negev" – 4:18
8. "... But Nothing is Lost" – 4:39
9. "When Shall I Be Free?" – 4:37
10. "The Stamen of the Shamen" – 4:11
11. "Circuits of the Imagination" – 3:12
12. "Linguistic Mystic" – 1:36
13. "Mentalism" – 2:54
14. "Invocation" – 2:40
15. "Molecular Superstructure" – 4:47
16. "Turn Up the Silence" – 3:22
17. "Exhalation" – 2:16
18. "Connoisseur of Hallucinations" – 3:31
19. "The Nebbish Route" – 3:36
20. "Falling Awake" – 1:50

According to Simon Posford^[2], the album actually has 8 songs divided into 20 tracks. Each part symbolizes a phase in the dream sequence.

Samples and allusions

• The first track off the album, "Botanical Dimensions", samples from the Richard Linklater film Waking Life.
• "The Nebbish Route" song samples Ned Flanders from The Simpsons episode "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)".
• "Levitation Nation" samples a 2003 song by the Brazilian samba school Beija-Flor de Nilópolis.
• The title for "Nothing Lasts" comes from the philosophical poetry of William Blake
• "Circuits of the Imagination" also contains a sample of the "bionic" sound effect from The Six Million Dollar Man.

Notes

1. ^ http://www.ethnotechno.com Ethnotechno review
2. ^ "Hallucinogen site Interview". January 2005. Archived from the original on 2005-03-09. http://web.archive.org/web/20050309214444/http://www.shpongle.com/hallucinogen/interviews-hallucinogen_site2005.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-11.