Varieties of Exile II

by Tallinn

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1.	Voiles 03:31	lyrics
Sweet September 1889 in the kampong, shimmering tones as easy as breathing the quai d'Orsay air. Over and over, I visit my diorama island, my victory over the sea and the language that keeps you so far away from me. Back in a Europe hurtling for the trenches, I'm developing prints of cathedrals and gardens in the rain. Removing an article, I bridge the distance between veils and sails over the sea... the doldrums that keep you so far away from me. But when they're gone, Paris is altered: a copy without an original. My victory over the sea and the language that keeps you so far from me.
2.	Colonial Bungalows 01:23	lyrics
(This dessicated wood, this European frame, begins to warp in tropical heat. In deepest silence, in serious immobility, the paint sublimates into air.)
3.	At the Freeport 02:23	lyrics
If you were to wait out by Changi in the rain, manifest to the paintings that you buy just to let go soon, what would you say if the money never came, if the whole con came to waste — a canvas that’s primed but still unravels? But if we sustain the lie this time we’ll just postpone the day...

about

Varieties of Exile II is the next chapter of Tallinn’s trilogy of EPs combining art-pop, classical guitar, and humid electronic texture.

The EP begins at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where Debussy first encountered the gamelan, on its first song “Voiles”. As a cascade of polyrhythms and electronic ambience emerge from lo-fi jazz guitar, the singer dreams about breaking the language barrier keeping them apart from a paradise of shimmering music.

But, as if in time-lapse, we hear the narrator’s orientalist delusions dissolve in “Colonial Bungalows”, in which buildings crumble into the forest accompanied by thunderstorms of shoegaze hiss and drone.

The EP ends with “At the Freeport”, an urgent, bass-led pop song that takes place in the modern-day economic zones where artworks become commodities. Sleek marimbas inspired by classical minimalism seem to ask: is high art doomed to become a medium of exchange?

The characters of Varieties of Exile II try to escape decadence by looking toward the exotic, but see only their own distorted reflections.

Artwork by Wenting Gu
www.wentinggu.com

Mastered by Warren Hildebrand
warrenhildebrand.com

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released May 25, 2020

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Tallinn New York, New York

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