Harriet Gibsone 

Melanie De Biasio: No Deal review – dark, transcendent songs that seem to suspend time

Classically trained Melanie de Biasio's first album in six years is an atmospheric treat that proves she's much more than a jazz vocal revivalist, writes Harriet Gibsone
  
  

Melanie de Biasio
Dissolving into the ether … Melanie de Biasio Photograph: PR

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.

 

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