Suzy Mangion, The Other Side of the Mountain CD
(Pickled Egg Records, Egg 67CD)

When Suzy Mangion split-up the acclaimed duo George in 2006, she loaded her Yamaha keyboards onto her percussion trolley, and went over the mountain, to see what she could see. And all that she could see was...

... The Other Side Of The Mountain. A solo album of old-fashioned length and unfashionable feeling. Suzy has carried over her distinctively intimate production and melancholic song-writing, which charged the George albums The Magic Lantern (Pickled Egg, 2003) and A Week of Kindness (Pickled Egg, 2005), and created a record even more intense, even more charming. From the gospel-choir reverie of “Evenings at Home” to the stark, primitive folk-frenzy of “Ohio the Homeland”, from 50’s-tinged Italian dream-pop in “Il Mondo è Qui” to the restrained anger of simple piano prayer “The Deliverers of their Country”, Suzy’s songs drift from style to style, but always unified by her trademark haunting vocals and complex harmonies. Suzy pushes herself further vocally on this album than on any of her work to date, and the freedom of working solo has allowed even more experimentation with her sound and songs, a harmonious noise of electronics old and new mixing with the bricolage of beats, banjos and beat-up pianos.

"Suzy Mangion is one of those people who ends up creating a lot of good music without anyone realising it until they look back and go, 'Hey, wait a minute...' [the same could be said the the entire Pickled Egg catalogue - Ed]. Mangion's solo debut works in a spooky psychedelic vein, that for all the use of everything from banjo to harp, relies ultimately on Mangion's lovely vocals. There's more variety and more beauty on here than most other albums are going to show this year" [Ned Raggett, Plan B]

"Suzy Mangion possesses a rich and evocative voice, which she puts to good use on her solo album. Things get serious with the folk dance rhythm of ‘Ohio The Homeland’, a beautiful sung lament full of longing and sadness. On the extremely pretty ‘Many Happy Returns’, the spirit of Karen Carpenter is invoked, the vocal performance quite breathtaking, whilst On ‘The March Past’, a scratchy electronic pulse is overlaid with a droning chord and delicate vocals in the spirit of Vashti Bunyan. Over 40 minutes, this album never puts a foot wrong" [Ptolemaic Terrascope]

"The Other Side of The Mountain burrows even further into Mangion’s nocturnal lo-fi world of skeletal Victorian spookiness, wartime balladry and Appalachian folk, with more defiant obliqueness than ever before" [Delusions of Adequacy]

'Ohio the Homeland' (MP3)
'Il Mondo e Qui' (MP3)

Listen to The Other Side of the Mountain on Last.fm

UK: £10.00

EU: €15.00

US: $18.00

George, A Week of Kindness CD
(Pickled Egg Records, Egg 56CD)

'A Week of Kindness' is the second album from the Manchester musical magpies. Their haunting anachronistic sound, heard in 2003's resoundingly successful debut album 'The Magic Lantern', resurfaces from its own very distinctive musical world. George’s adventures in bricolage gather strength in their new record, a coherent miscellany of bric-à-brac electronics and clockwork melody. It proffers to the listener the saddest, prettiest songs about early surgical cinema, living in memory or a fearful search for joy, that they will hear for a long time. The old-style "partners in chime" [Sleazenation] wish to sing their hearts out to you!

"There’s a massive tension in their music, starkly minimal with something nasty threatening to emerge, like a shattered wine glass in a costume drama dinner party. Nervous keyboards played like a school assembly recital; gentle but jagged rhythmic guitar strumming; strong, wavering voice like a mean-drunk Sandy Denny echoing around the big, dark hall. I can imagine all of their songs taking place in a microcosm of some phantasmagorical stately home; first a song for looking out from the upstairs balcony on some doomed frosty morning, then they add some pre-recorded voodoo drumming to evoke some guilt-fuelled Dionysian tryst in the spring-blooming garden. Maybe D.H. Lawrence had nightmares like this sometimes..." [Ben Haggar, Plan B]

'The New and Better Heart' (MP3)
'My Fear Keeps God a Hiding' (MP3)
'Week of Wonders' (MP3)
'Joy Could be Here' (MP3)

Download A Week of Kindness from eMusic
Listen to A Week of Kindness on Last.fm

UK: £10.00

EU: €15.00

US: $18.00

George, The Magic Lantern CD
(Pickled Egg Records, Egg 47CD)

"Michael Varty and Suzy Mangion sound partly like Manchester's answer to Low, but a studied eccentricity percolates their music, pitched somewhere between folk electronica and sepia-hued melancholy. Instrumentally, 'The Magic Lantern' display's an antiquarian's magpie methodology, with George's vintage sense of otherness broadly occupying the same territory as Pram. However, Suzy Mangion's voice cuts through the muggy layer of postmodernism to deliver songs that beautifully capture a sense of perpetual loss through the passing of time itself. The music's junk shop aesthetic matches primitive electronica and music box tinkling in a style that sometimes veers close to sentimentality, but is rescued in the end by its unassuming charm" [Tom Ridge, The Wire]

"Hypnotic debut from Mancunian duo.  When she’s not collaborating with the likes of Arbol and Piano Magic, singer Suzy Mangion writes intimate torch songs with multi-instrumentalist Michael Varty. Recorded at their home studio in Manchester, 'The Magic Lantern' starts with a lush vocal harmony, then proceeds to take the listener on a slow waltz through 60 minutes of late-night laments, melancholy folk ballads and fairground instrumentals. One minute Mangion sounds like Joni Mitchell crooning over a Wurlitzer, the next she’s whispering like Vincent Gallo’s long-lost cousin over a fragile score of guitars, chimes, strings and loops. Either way, the results are never less than mesmerising" [Sarah Jane, Uncut]

"The Magic Lantern is a disc by new Manchester duo of Michael Varty and Suzy Mangion, occasional singer with Piano Magic. The George sensibilty is much more song based, and the instrumentation mainly acoustic, with highly sparing interventions of electronics, only to add atmosphere to the record's extremely intimate mood. The Magic Lantern's suite of beautiful songs makes no vulgar attempt to grab your attention, and its inward-looking focus put me in mind of the woody folkisms of Vashti Bunyan, previously the last word in this kind of hushed English Fireside reverie" [John Bagnall, The Sound Projector]

'The Track Through the Woods' (MP3)
'Sacamento' (MP3)
'Do You Know a Music?' (MP3)

Download The Magic Lantern from eMusic
Listen to The Magic Lantern on Last.fm

UK: £10.00

EU: €15.00

US: $18.00

George, 'All Good Things' CD EP
(Lejos Records Lejos 002)

Pickled Egg has a limited number of the new George EP, 'All Good things', released on the Spanish label, Lejos.

'Wait' (MP3)

UK: £5.00

EU: €8.00

US: $10.00