Some messages arrive too late.
Others never quite leave.
Fax Machine Heartbreak looks back at the imperfect machines people once trusted with important things. Answering machines, cassette tapes, payphones and fax lines preserve voices badly, allowing memories to fade, distort and occasionally return without warning. Technology moves on, but the messages left behind continue repeating for anyone still listening. Eventually even that private nostalgia is interrupted. PRE would like your attention back.
Message received
Message unclear
Please hold
Answering machine blinking in an empty flat
Three AM television glowing pale blue static
Cheap blinds rattling against rainy windows
Somebody smoking quietly on the fire escape
Your voice trapped inside cassette tape fragments
Played back softer every passing week
Old receipts scattered beside cold coffee cups
Like evidence from a failed relationship
The radiator knocks in uneven rhythms
Neighbours arguing through paper-thin walls
Late-night infomercials promise transformation
Nobody on the screen looks fully alive
Streetlights bleeding through nicotine curtains
Everything smells faintly electrical tonight
Leave a message after the tone
Leave a message after the tone
Fax Machine Heartbreak
Static where your voice should be
Fax Machine Heartbreak
Love lost in bad fidelity
Neon reflections, midnight trains
Dead phone lines and window rain
Everybody searching for connection
Through machines too old to care
Payphone numbers fading from memory
Tiny human moments swallowed by progress
Photocopied photographs losing detail slowly
Faces dissolving into grain and shadows
Somewhere downtown the last video store closes
Without ceremony or final applause
Taxi lights drift across wet concrete
Like tired satellites above the city
You said forever through distorted speakers
I still hear it in electrical hums
The fax machine screams in the next room suddenly
Like the building itself remembered something
Morning arrives colourless and exhausted
Another transmission nobody answers
Maybe every machine remembers us a little
Tiny ghosts trapped in the circuitry
Repeating old messages forever
Call Waiting
Call Waiting
Call Waiting
Fax Machine Heartbreak
Static where your voice should be
Fax Machine Heartbreak
Love lost in bad fidelity
Neon reflections, midnight trains
Dead phone lines and window rain
Everybody searching for connection
Through machines too old to care
Fax Machine Heartbreak
Every memory degrades with time
Fax Machine Heartbreak
Your last words trapped between the lines
Signal fading, tape decay
Some feelings never transmit clean
Everybody haunted by the ghosts
Inside forgotten answering machines
Message deleted
Message deleted
Please remain entertained