Julian Curwin ‘The Mango Balloon Volume 2’
(Romero/Newmarket)

Review in The Sydney Morning Herald (Metro), 7th December 2012 by John Shand – 4 stars

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.