Here’s what you do when you see a record with a weird name like “Tee Mango” scratched on the cover: you pick it up, you play it, and what you do from there is up to you but you certainly better not ignore it. Tee is a whirlwind of energy and ideas and that comes through in every record he puts out under his name.
If that sounds like wind-up for some kind of saucer-eyed “synth artisan” who uses $50,000 worth of gear to make house music that sounds like it was recorded in the toilet at Smartbar, then I’ve misled you because Tee’s albums are among the best in show in dance music. Tee Mango has released some of the better records on Aus Music (which has never lacked a spot in my “best of” list for the last five years) and made himself a little nest in Jimpster‘s attic at Delusions Of Grandeur. It’s the real deal and Big Houser is as real as it gets.
“Bright White Light” is the first track and it’s the outlier: an irresistible little pop ditty that passes through 30 years of electro history, back and forth to the present, zooming in from proto-house to post-punk funk. It’s Prince’s little brother jamming with Depeche Mode and Gary Numan is behind the console smoking a cigarette with an ash burning down to the filter and nodding.
That emotional buoyancy carries over in spirit if not sound on “Big Houser,” with big(ger) chords dancing on a pulsing bassline. A ’70s soul funk eruption brings this one to a cataclysmic end with the handcranked thunderbolt boogie of “Warm Your Hands.”
If you want to know what everyone else is doing, what trend is going to catapult out of the London superclubs or Berlin grottoes next year and signal that every techno DJ should simultaneously drop any pretense of individuality and start playing trance, or drum’n’bass, or progressive, or k-hole house, then Tee Mango is the just not the right artist for you. Always inventive, he follows his own inspiration and it leads him, as it does here, into some strange and beautiful places. It’s worth spending some time there.
Tee Mango: Big Houser (AnoAno / Digital)
1. Tee Mango: Bright White Light (04:43)
2. Tee Mango: Big Houser (short edit) (03:48)
3. Tee Mango: Big Houser (07:12)
4. Tee Mango: Warm Your Hands (05:10)
⚪️ Disclosure Statement: This record was submitted as a promo.
Previous Coverage:
Feature Profile: Art/Artifact: The Music of Tee Mango (2020)
Tee Mango drops a new EP for Aus, “Last Dance” (2022)
AUS Music Releases Tee Mango’s EP #2 (2018)
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