Dump

"Dump" is the fifth track off of Time 'n' Place.

Composition
With the ending of Flyway being described by Sarah Midori Perry as an "anti-transition", the song begins with a very slow and quiet beat. Sarah claims that Gus "mindlessly plays the same one-bar drum pattern for the entire song". Sarah claimed that the group was interested in doing something so simple it could be done in drum machine, but doing it in person so it would sound "ever-so-slightly different". The song's creation started with these verse chords, which are played on a very lo-fi Casio DM-100 sampler using a long note sung into the onboard mic. The slowed-down field recording in the song plays throughout the entire track. Sarah claims it is "another example of the mysterious, detailed, messy textures we created with hardware and left in to purposefully muddy the water". The song ends with a bell ring played backwards, which transitions into Make Believe.

Meaning
"Dump" is about a literal dump ground. According to Sarah, the song was written specifically about the Waldo Depot Waste Disposal Site in Bromley, which is so close to Gus's childhood home that you can smell it when the weather gets hot. The song is a melancholy piece about how people discard things that were once important to them once they no longer want them. Sarah claims: "The dump has a uniquely strange atmosphere; it's one of the few places where we confront the freakish reality behind our comfortable, largely virtual lifestyles."

Lyrics
Show the man a pass and Everything you've got Go to where he points and Throw it all on top Hear the crunching beneath of junk let go A parrot cage and dial phones

Blue for small electrics Microwaves in here Television pieces In a rusty skip But be careful if you brought chemicals They've got a place especially for those

And there's always a busy crowd around People come from all over town (over town) Dropping off the things that they no longer need to keep

Everybody's collage Stacking up the wall When the sun is out the Scent gets pretty tall But the site operators don't care much They're looking forward to their lunch

And when we fill it up A lorry comes and drags it on the tarmac Somewhere far from here So when they let us in At six A.M. The spaces are empty again

And there's always a busy crowd around People come from all over town (over town) Dropping off the things that they no longer need to keep

Trivia

 * According to Sarah, an early version of the song that ended up becoming "Dump" was titled "Pericoronitis", with lyrics addressing the affliction of the same name, suffered by young adults everywhere as their wisdom teeth emerge. It was inspired by a series of painful bouts the group experienced.
 * The line about the parrot cage in the dump is a subtle reference to the previous song on the album, "Flyway". Flyway is about birds flying away once the weather gets too cold for them, and a cage being in the dump would imply the bird has left, so the owner no longer has a use for its cage.