Melanie De Biasio – No Deal (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Melanie De Biasio – No Deal (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 38:35 minutes | 397 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Play It Again Sam

Tasteful, subtle and inscrutable, Belgium’s Melanie De Biasio and the band have made one of the few modern vocal jazz records. The singer, who also plays flute on the album, which she studied at the Conservatoire Royal De Bruxelles – was born in Charleroi, Belgium, to an Italian family originally from Venice and grew up listening to Maria Callas, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Jeff Buckley and Rage Against The Machine. But you wouldn’t necessarily infer such diverse influences from No Deal. It’s a record that she produced herself and is steeped in the language of blues and jazz. “No Deal” is a dark, transcendent songs that seem to suspend time.

Among the buzzing cyber hive and unrelenting pace of modern life, there is a special place for albums that suspend time. Melanie de Biasio’s first album in six years is seven songs of dark, transcendent music. Although deeply entrenched in jazz (she is a classically trained flautist and singer), No Deal’s atmosphere lurks in the same place as This Mortal Coil’s Lynchian glow, Portishead’s sinister authority and Mark Hollis of Talk Talk’s smoky self-titled solo album. Revered by many in her native country as the Belgian Billie Holiday, she defies this comparison to iconic jazz singers on her cover of Nina Simone’s I’m Gonna Leave You – a track Biasio reimagines brilliantly with the neat, clipped enunciation of her bruised yet burly vocals. As the final patters of the album’s send-off, With All My Love, dissolve into the ether, the eerie silence that’s left is dizzying.

Tracklist:
1-1. Melanie De Biasio – I Feel You (01:43)
1-2. Melanie De Biasio – The Flow (05:18)
1-3. Melanie De Biasio – No Deal (04:20)
1-4. Melanie De Biasio – With Love (02:46)
1-5. Melanie De Biasio – Sweet Darling Pain (06:30)
1-6. Melanie De Biasio – I’m Gonna Leave You (04:25)
1-7. Melanie De Biasio – With All My Love (08:23)
1-8. Melanie De Biasio – Sweet Darling Pain (alternative take) (05:07)

Personnel:
Melanie De Biasio – vocals, flute
Pascal Mohy – piano
Pascal Paulus – clavinet
Dré Pallemaerts – drums

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