(ROM004) Released November 9, 2012
CD / Bandcamp / UK / US
Watch the official video for ‘Dancing On My Own Grave’
Julian Curwin’s The Mango Balloon is essentially a stripped-back chamber version of The Tango Saloon, with a lighter sound bringing lounge, exotica and continental jazz to the larger band’s tango/western blend. Volume 2 also features vocalist/guitarist Brian Campeau, influencing the music towards other exotic places, including swampy blues, soaring mountain songs, and the delicate waltz of first single ‘Dancing On My Own Grave’.
- Dancing On My Own Grave
- Romero
- Bubble Boy
- Fiesta
- Deliverance
- Grindhouse
- The Bridge
- Sleepwalker
- The Stand
- A Duet
- The Two Taverns
- Brocken Spectre
- On The Road
Review in The Sydney Morning Herald (7/12/12) by John Shand
The clown’s mask is inverted more often, and as a consequence Julian Curwin’s Mango Balloon project flies even higher on this second album. Singer Brian Campeau joins on four tracks, including the stunningly fragile and stark Dancing On My Own Grave and the bewitching Sleepwalker. Elsewhere, Curwin’s love of juxtaposing the eerie and the dramatic with the plain goofy is hard at work. Attractive melodies materialise and dematerialise, and sounds flutter and float in the guitarist-composer’s delightfully genre-free approach. His sextet is a little chamber orchestra capable of realising a breadth of sonic options with precision, humour, passion and understatement. Sydney would be a duller place without Julian Curwin.
