In the absence of context — Slowmango’s debut album ‘Hypercolour Miscellaneous’
In the early morning of new release day, I sat idly at my keyboard considering writing a review of the second Porch Records label release ‘Hypercolour Miscellaneous’. But I couldn’t find a starting place in the absence of context for the band (Slowmango) and their subsequent abstract art collective, Bait Fridge. That was until going to their illustrious titled album launch, ‘Slowmango & The Bait Fridge present: Hypercolour Miscellaneous Bistro Buffet’. Now after dining at the bistro, my hands’a spewing lobster meatballs and crab linguine all over my black dull keyboard.
Walking up to the venue, a slim sheik city center outdoor bar (The Lab) lay sandwiched in between a heritage brick wall and a dark desolate carpark known to me previously as an alluring but then unassuming venue after passing by once before for Porch Records first EP launch with Nu Article. Approaching the unbusy entrance gate, I slowed my pace to question the foil covered Martian looking group stood posing at the venue’s entrance barring my entry. Surprising the terrestrials from behind, I thought they were taking a photo in a waiter position holding a lid over one of the poor devils heads stuck on a cylindrical foil draped dress like a metal garbage can being offered as “entrees”. I held my ticket out to them but they weren’t interested.
Under the marquee moon the amateur food reviewers waited to enter the building hungrily eyeing off the now wandering Martian waiters. One of their arm appendages extended twice the normal length — raising concerned chuckles with the waiting diners and personal confusion when Luffy tapped me on the shoulder from behind returning the surprise from earlier. Once inside at the end of a long dark grey hallway stood two black-tie dressed, clown face painted — I don’t know what you ritzy folk say, maître d’? The xecutive waiters welcomed the entering patrons with the added responsibility of distributing handmade patched cloth napkins. Polite as they should be they offered without force only insisting on returning said napkins after dinner for the next 9:30 service. (Imagine a double shift and having grease paint dripping down your face onto the food halfway through the second serving, ridiculous, riot people! UNIONIZE)
It was in the next moment, in the same breath as stuffing my napkin into my jacket glazed over and caked in awe and wonder searching the room that I found all the context I needed for not only the album, but the band I knew so little about — I discovered they were aliens. They invaded this once familiar place and turned it wild with organics from their distant helium rich world spawning creatures like living C. M. Kosemen illustrations. A familiar yet slightly irregularly proportioned five foot red lobster character was embedded at the entrance to the room on a beach chair merrily puffing on a relative sized three foot cigarette clenched in it’s deadly claw. Inconspicuously next to it a blue feathered duck aspiring species with two less deadly claws sat close surveying the room guarding what I hadn’t realised yet, was our dinner. Considering this after the poor freak sized neighbour met it’s demise, if I ever go out to cannibals I wish it to be in a similar situation — toking on a final line before entering the boiling room.
Juxtaposing the imminent unsuspecting doom, an ethereal grey and white hue (like the cover of After The Magic or OK Computer) filled the room on the colour propolsing surrounding wall-to-wall LCD screens peppered with descending particles — indicating to a gradual levitating sensation like an elevator rising to a restaurant in the sky that had adopted French accents to avoid suspicion and inquiry from SafeWork SA. The band, our suspicious looking chefs for this evening, were appropriately dressed in chef whites, succeeding chef hats and weirdly a pope mitre hat and lampshade eye mask (seriously look it up). Stood a few inches off the floor onstage unguarded from the growing voracious crowd, behind their culinary tools swirling and mincing a slow bassy groove awaiting all the guests to finally file in for the evenings early service of early sleepers (me included). Swinging subtly and stoically, the bands faces pitched down to their instruments avoiding eye contact to avoid ruining the appearance of introductions to come from the maître d’s soon after.
Now I’m no art major or philosophical purveyor of the estranged and exotic to explain what any of this means (leave the band to maybe give insight one day), but I can assure you well endowed cultural specimen or lab rat alike that I was completely lost entering this. I was lost and confused, twisted and used, knew a better hive persisted. An Englishman in New York, a stranger in a strange land faring new horizons — or more-so an oafish baboon racing to the toilet (where I half expected a toilet attendant handing out grapes moulded like a greek sculpture). A final breath before leaping back into the new world I collected my thoughts and braced for the new situation, this was no regular local band show, I yarned to accept that this once distinct venue was replaced by a piece of hallowed rock lifted from a foreign land fifty miles into the country. Or closer to fifty-four miles down A13 at least.
The album was recorded at a “picturesque shack” flipped into a recording studio in what I imagine resembles a sparsely multicolored painted rainbow prairie shack on the outskirts of a sunny swamp somewhere down in Louisiana — rather than the relative Fleurier Peninsula. Over the course of ten days, the band seemed to have transferred my imagined image into a series of cooling vials bubbling on a windowsill overlooking the deep blue waters of the south. The vials tagged ‘Ginger’, ‘Manuka’ and ‘Pacific Wind’ (freighted overnight) looked out down to the sand admiring the calm tranquil coming and going of washes of sea froth and sea-weeed — and cured adjustingly. ‘Pacific Wind’ — the special valerian root was altered before its final settling exposed to liquorice scents also found in NSW, used among other chefs Babe Rainbow in their organic produce café. The easiest entry taster to the cuisine of the album, it stands out for a laxed and spoonful of sugar approach, smooth acoustic guitar tones capped with Cal Tjader vibraphone swings offering head pinging adjustments to your ascension into nothingness, in rejuvenating preparation for your trip to the funkland beyond the border with Vicky. It’s here the vials ‘Ace’, ‘Blob Funk’ and ‘Montgolfier’ (my favourite) looked out at the same deep waters as before, and rather admired the crashing and clapping final explosion the water made on Green Bay, and mimicked their groovy explosiveness. These showcase the band in full effect, blowin’ sax from Nicole Hobson pushing the plate across the table in “listen to me” moments craving the space Adrian Schmidt Mumm vocal’s pushingly nudge out. My first taste of his, floury voice with ‘Ride On, Brocoly Cowboy’ before the release of the album, seemed to contrast the music too much in sounding expected or too humane to represent this ragtag group of space shawarma bounty hunters — but offers that relatable step into the new void like Lux Interior into the green fuz. It’s at the end of this swell album that SOMEONE (I’m looking at you Maureen) added nightshade and Riccadonna to the mix of a deep disco cut with that sublime late night neon guitar mutating into this Floydian journey into a bliss tropical celebration with loved ones. The inclusion of this last track is like sweet balsamic glaze resting perfectly in the middle of the vial between oil and water, where the return to the neon city slightly dulls the closing moments of this album — but with the other tastes and flavours so rich and scrumptious, it’s a great time for all.
Dinner and the show started with the lights going down exposing the comical faced yet fanciful draped maître d’s under spotlights on a cubed island welcoming the now ravenous crowd to this special occasion by way of meditating exercises (as if that’d nourish my hunger). The critics surrounding the announcers circled 360 degrees around and could compare the critical methods of the others under the guise of darkness befallen them. Hat? Beanie? Stitched or printed? Jacket or sweater in this now warming current? Snapped out of my surrounding awareness check, the ding of an electronic service bell sounded off from the top of a helmed push button rattler on top of one of the island survivors indicating the first course from the chefs. Now in most shows, the mood and limits of energy of the crowd is quickly charted within the very first song depending on the engagement of the band — like Genesis Owusu or David Le’aupepe effectively having the vocalist as the main culprit in riling the crowd, Slowmango instead opens the infinitely deep, creative alien potential of The Bait Fridge — and out of it delectables from last weeks takeout in the Solana Galaxy flood the crowd with wondrous species like the red-eyed itching woolen insects and mop induced banana split safety sign creature dancing and breathing among us earthlings. At first it’s like walking back into the room again full of awe and wonder but it’s all a design, distracted by the alien invasion the music and band melt into the shadows of this now flashing room. They travel through the floor hopping shadows one person to the next slowly taking hold of our feet and ankles corrupting our legs, hips then shoulders — and play them like puppets on marionette strings dancing to a tarantella. “DANCE THE PLAGUE AWAY! Let this groove move you” — and that’s exactly what it did. Complete collective energy and mood was pooled at our feet exposing the lie hanging around our necks with the now useless napkins, this was no bistro — this was a baptism — and the priest had mallets in his hands.
Like my own communion, I remember few details of the rest of the service but a slight layer of water following me when leaving (this time on a phone call dashing out of the building returning my unused napkin). Except I’m sure the sacrifice of a huge singing lobster to stabbing didn’t happen in the Queen of Angels or the following rave sequence with blood from the lobster still dripping down the walls.
There’s a reason my favourite album is my favourite, nothing had ever sounded like that before and has since, so there’s a longing for feeling exposed and bare to the elements of primates playing paeans for that first time. After listening to Hypercolour Miscellaneous for the past three days over this weekend — I have a similar longing. One I’ve only ever had a similar experience twice only this album doesn’t just make me yearn for that virgin listen, but for the performance and introduction to something I never could have imagined. A totally immersive and foreign set of images and corresponding music I can replay that will give me a slither of that initial feeling of discovery and devouring.
