Jo Mango

Calamateur – ‘Retreat’ featuring Jo Mango

At the risk of boring everyone by repeating myself (and sounding like a big-head), I think my new album is some of the best music I’ve ever made….but that’s only because I had a lot of help from some very talented people.

I’ve written about some of them on this blog before:

Mark Hilditch, Iain Hutchison, DUFI, and Phil Moir. All good friends and supremely awesome people!

The third track, ‘Retreat’ (which you can listen to here) is possibly my favourite of all the songs on my album, partly because it’s the one that was written last, but mostly because it features the beautiful voice of Jo Mango:

Anyone reading this will no doubt already know who Jo Mango is, but for those that don’t, she is a Glasgow-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has worked with the likes of Vashti Bunyan, David Byrne and Devendra Banhart. She also co-wrote Teenage Fanclub’s latest single, ‘Baby Lee‘.

While I was recording the album, I sent her an email asking her if she would be up for singing on one of my songs. After sending an initial demo, she quite rightly sent me a refreshingly honest email telling me she liked the tune but that some of the lyrics were, well…crap. So I had another go and we were both much happier with the finished result 🙂

Jo has just released this gorgeous slab of etched 10″ double vinyl entitled ‘The Moth and The Moon / The Black Sun‘. Limited to just 190 copies, the two songs on it are amazing.

Here’s Jo and her band playing ‘The Moth and The Moon’ at the Solas Festival a couple of weeks ago: