Fresh Mango: August 27, 2022

First of all, and because it cannot be said often enough:

нет войны | ні війні | No War

How to help the people in Ukraine
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5 great new releases - 5 short reviews.
If available on Spotify, one song each will also be added to the MangoRotation playlist for 14 days.
Further featured playlists of this post will be listed on the bottom.

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Ask Carol - AC I: Control You
(56:39, Album, CD/Digital, ChoVan Records, 26/08/2022)
Carol (vocals, guitar, bass, percussion) and Mr. Ask (drums, guitar, keys, sampling) from Norwegian Auma are Ask Carol. The duo has released their first full-length "AC I: Control You" on CD and for streaming, and they have thereby created a savage, sensual and highly versatile thunderstorm of independent rock music.
The duo's debut album reaches from emotional and melancholic Blues tunes with traces of Dark Folk and thrilling Electronica over to heavily rolling Grunge and Alternative bangers for your party playlist. From the slow jam over the motivating rhythm up to the dancehall sweeper, Mr. Ask and Carol present themselves full of confidence and magic. Thus, the almost one-hour long sonic journey is a psychedelic and cinematic trip to a space where time stands still and colours melt.
This album is a genre-bending, timeless phenomenon, ready to enchant and please (and maybe control) you.

Teen Mortgage - Tuning in
(01:55, Single, Digital, King Pizza Records, 26/08/2022)
Freedom of press is a highly important and very fragile good. This feature of liberty is often endangered by oppressive political systems - think of the Russian Federation, the Turkish Republic, the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the People's Republic of Korea for example. Another threat for freedom of press though lays in neo-liberalism and capitalism - in Switzerland a referendum could barely stop national media broadcast from going full private, and Washington, D.C.'s Garage and Punk Rock band Teen Mortgage is referring to majority of media in the US are run by five big conglomerates. The message by the band from the capital is hence to ignore those spin doctors' braodcast.
What to do instead? You can turn up the volume for this banging Garage Punk anthem with its vibrant Motown sound. Once more, Teen Mortgage have created a dynamic wrecking ball of a party song.

Ferum - Asunder/Erode
(44:56, Album, Vinyl/CD/Digital, Avantgarde Music/Unorthodox Emanations, 19/08/2022)
Ferum were orignally formed in Italy in 2017. Now bass player Matteo and drummer Are still live in Bologna while guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Samantha has moved to Estonian capital Tallinn. Almost 2,500 kilometres divide the band who has nevertheless produced their debut album "Asunder/Erode" which is now available via Avantgarde Music.
The sound presented on this eight-track beast of an album is the soundtrack of the army of the dead marching on Earth's soil with heavy armor and all sorts of torture instruments while the sky is turning black from ashes and the planet is aflame. This is Death Doom Metal straight from the nightmares of humankind, the sonic version of paintins by Paolo Girardi or Hieronymus Bosch.

13 Year Cicada - GTA
(04:30, Single, Digital, Gandula/BlauBlau Records/Tomatenplatten, 26/08/2022)
Zooey (keys, vocals, samples), Philip (drums, samples) and Hotti (bass, samples) are three friends from German capital Berlin, and all of them have their musical backgrounds in Jazz. Together, the three talented artists are 13 Year Cicada - a band that successfully breaks up musical conventions and rearranges the scattered pieces to create something new. The latest product of their decontructional and creative process is the single 'GTA' which was not only built from samples from the Grand Theft Auto video game series, but also refers to these games content-wise. The song is the result of vocalist Zooey playing a lot of GTA during the pandemic and therefore deeply diving into the universe of Rockstar Games where every car can be heisted and every house can be broken into.
Music-wise, 'GTA' is a misty, dreamy, hazy atmospheric soundscape that was born from a clash of Post Punk and R'n'B. The sound is soulful, thick, melancholic, and yet dynamic. With this single, the anticpation for 13 Year Cicada's upcoming third full-length release "haha garavity" on September 14, has received a powerful boost.

Failing Exploration - Influence Effect
(04:51, Single, Digital, selfrelease, 26/08/2022)
And although it is less experimental than 13 Year Cicada's 'GTA', the latest single 'Influence Effect' by Guatemala City-based du Failing Exploration has a similar atmospheric and cinematic vibe. The single is part five of the ten-track journey "The Broken Fingers Blues" on which Failing Exploration concern the Coronacene and its effects on people's metal health. The latest single takes on the topic of bipolar disorder - a mental health issue that is often being romanticized, idealized or depicted in a very wrong way. For those who know the struggle of living between thick depressive episodes and numbing mania these images are even more hurtful.
Thus, Failing Exploration have presented an honest and sober image of what bipolar disorder may feel like - with or without a pandemic as an extra catalyzer. The soundscape therefore reaches from fuzzy numbing Dream Pop and Shoegaze over dynamic Punk and Post Punk up to razor-sharp Heavy Metal.