Melanie De Biasio – Lilies (2017)  


Review:
Fourth time around with Melanie De Biasio and her new album Lilies and you can be certain about one thing for sure – she’s a musician with a definite vision and she sticks to it. No ifs or buts. Her 2007 debut A stomach Is Burning never really reached further than the borders of her native Belgium, but the sophomore release No Deal certainly reached the fans of all that has to do with avant-noir jazz-inflected music, including some prominent faces like Giles Peterson. Then De Biasio came up with Blackened Cities, an elongated EP that contained a musical suite of practically industrial electronics. Some listeners that got drawn in by her subdued, gentle vocals were perhaps stunned, but she stuck to it and even played that suite as a part of her set at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam in 2016. But De Biasio is back with Lilies and her version of late night jazz, film noir music and electronic embellishments, that can be situated anywhere between Nina Simone and Judy Nylon. If No Deal was considered a musical triumph for classical trained De Biasio, Lilies further ups the ante. What is even more striking is that Lilies is practically a home production which De Biasio did solely on her computer and using a single, cheap Share mike. Again, she plays most of the instruments herself quite brilliantly, without burdening her music with unnecessary elements. As the album progresses, it becomes more and more evident that her composing skills are also developing, without deviating from her musical vision. Whether it is the Nina Simone inflected title track with just De Biasio’s voice and piano and some indescribable, subtle background hum or the rhythmically pouncing “Let Me Love You”, using just a bass and drum thumping, De Biasio confirms all the superlatives she has garnered so far. The standouts here are really hard to pick, but De Biasio’s version of “Afro Blue” actually gives new touches to the jazz standard, and “All My Worlds” is certainly one of the best tracks she has written so far. — bandcamp


   


Track List:
01 - Your Freedom Is the End of Me
02 - Gold Junkies
03 - Lilies
04 - Let Me Love You
05 - Sitting in the Stairwell
06 - Brother
07 - Afro Blue
08 - All My Worlds
09 - And My Heart Goes On


Media Report:
Genre: jazz
Origin: Belgium  
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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