Secret Alphabets

Album: West Rider Pauper Lunatic Asylum (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • Guitarist and chief songwriter Serge Pizzorno explained this song to the NME June 13, 2009: "This has a real 'opium-chasers' feel. It's about this mad expedition to Cairo in the 19th century, lots of mystical weird stuff fizzing around."
  • The song ends with an orchestral arrangement. Pizzorno told the NME that it contains a sample of German violinist Helmut Zacharias playing the traditional Japanese folk song "Sakura Sakura." He added: "I've always had in mind to use it."

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