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Mandarin Song

by Virginia Sook

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  • Cassette
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Pink cassette version with insert in an ink-stamped canvas bag. On a run of 20 copies. Insert by OneThirtyEight Design. Artwork by Clare Opatra. Three tracks and the tapes play the same songs on both sides.

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1.
Grow with such haste it’s a race to be known the taste was sour plucked from it’s place premature My face winced – it was bitter I said too much to a stranger I’ve said too much now some strange man knows my thoughts I bought a plant, it was dying Said ‘for Pete’s sake, are you thirsty? Will you ever know just what you’ve meant to me?’ There’s no going back once you’ve felt a love like that But when you die you’ll be born again Scream at the midwives to help you there It’s not straight like a piece of string It’s round like a mandarin When you die you’ll be born again Since I was a child I’ve known my children It’s not smooth like a glass of milk There are craters like a mandarin When you die you’ll be born again The only sense is equilibrium There’s no answer like a grade school test It’s beguiling like a raven There are layers like a mandarin.
2.
Zeitgeist 04:16
Zeitgeist of our lives It’s history’s birthright Meaning on your tongue Like a lunch break suicide jump. Jump on - bandwagon’s leaving town You subdued all that touched your hands And you wrote the book on good relations And you funded empty conversations. Open the door- what do you see? Why don’t you just ask me instead? I wrote the book on seasons changing. Sea life that’s thankful for the arc The sultry state of summers march The trees grew legs and fled the park. I have an adjective and verb for every scene Sum up existence in one line: we are changing. And you are staying put. You float as high as that satellite that read our minds. Convoluted spite. Serpentine and polite.
3.
Kingdoms 03:45
Oh an anchor was built from the cells of my skin If I could just reach out and touch it. And a game we would play at the end of the day The kingdoms would crash down before us The rubble swept up before dinner. I’d appear clad in soot like an old soldiers boot I’d sneer and I’d suffer my sentence Soft whispers beneath sheets About structures so sovereign built when I’d finally outgrown my mother But now my foot can’t squeeze into her slipper. No little light bulb to be refit ‘Cause no little wick was left unlit When I told you not to be afraid I referred to the shadows in caves When the weak and domestic run away. Oh a compass composed of the bones in my toes Pray I could just know where I’m going. And this routine gets played over day after day My hands now resemble sandpaper My spirit as poor as a beggar. No little light bulb to be refit ‘Cause no little wick was left unlit On the day she did not return home You left a message on my telephone Said ‘Oh look at all the bad things I’ve done’ And I trembled like gelatin And I whimpered as though I’d been branded.

about

Mandarin Song was recorded and mixed by Josephson Records in 2016. It was mastered by TW Walsh. Virginia Sook for this recording session was: Lindsay Roser, Matthew Hsu, Andrew McInally, Nathan Kearney and Jaymee Watkin.

Zeitgeist and Kingdoms were recorded in 2013 and originally appeared on "The Life To Which I Belong". Recorded by Turi Agistino from Ohm recording. Virginia Sook for this recording was: Lindsay Roser, Ran Jacobs and Amy Costello.

This is rs026.

credits

released October 14, 2016

Artwork by Clare Opatra.

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ruined smile records Brisbane, Australia

DIY label based in Brisbane, Australia via London, UK.

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