Biasio Melanie De

Melanie De Biasio is a graduate of the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles and already an acclaimed artist in her home country of Belgium and in the neighbouring Francophone nation to the south. Initially heralded as a new voice in jazz, albeit jazz "d'autres univers", other-worldly, so to speak, her first album "A Stomach Is Burning" was closer to the smoky, smouldering sound you dream of stumbling upon in a jazz cellar. Preferably in Paris or New York in, let's say, 1959.

"No Deal", her sophomore album, appears almost monochromatically minimalist at first, A simple cover shot. Melanie has cut her hair. Miles Davis "A Kind Of Blue" typography. Seven songs, through which her own voice drifts gracefully, at times disappearing altogether. Like a tintype photograph, this record needs time to develop, for the details to become clear, as if by magic.

"No Deal" comes in at 33 and a third minutes, which could be mistaken for a nod to the golden age of the jazz LP. And yet its brevity (or succinctness) is genuinely hard to believe. It reverberates, echoes an resonates. Throw a stone into the lake and the concentric ripples seem to go on for ever.