Together since mid-2019, Adelaide five-piece group Slowmango have marinated long enough to now release their debut, self-titled EP.
With influences spanning the entire sphere of world music – from Ethio jazz to Peruvian psych, Arabic funk to West-African disco – the band features brothers Adrian Schmidt Mumm and Kaspar Schmidt Mumm as well as Aidan 'Jazzy' Jones, Mat Morison and Zeno Kordov.Slowmango gathered at the rural studio of Surahn Sidhu, of Empire Of The Sun and The Swiss renown, to record the EP late last year. "The recording process was all very natural," Adrian says.
"We'd just been gigging every week for the past three months and Surahn approached us to record an EP.
"Of course we said yes, so we all took a week off work, rented a beach shack and spent every day and night in the studio.
"There was never a bad moment, even when the battery of my '83 Brumby died after we'd just gotten out of the studio at 2am and had to push start it in the dark, up a hill, on a farm paddock."
With a backdrop of local wines and herbs on the Willunga property, Slowmango cooked up a batch of three songs; from the 'intergalactic Turkish wedding song' of 'Thairade' to the meditative final track 'Hold Tomorrow', sung in German and evoking familiar feelings of being told a bedtime story.
The EP's middle child, 'Global Citizen', takes you on a journey of reclined surf guitar, warm vibraphone, and groove-laden rhythms.
"The final track 'Hold Tomorrow' is my personal favourite," adds Adrian. "It's a classic German bedtime story and will forever remind me of the time spent recording this EP.
"It felt like another world, and to me this song really captures the moment. Even if you can't understand German, I think the feeling still comes across."
