Woodstock and Glastonbury Fayre icon Melanie had been working with Easy Action on the deluxe vinyl and CD rerelease of one of the most legendary albums in her long catalogue prior to her very sad passing.

In 1972, Melanie and her producer and husband Peter Schekeryk began work on what she intended to be her most ambitious album yet. Stoneground Words was to be a double album - the first such statement from any female rock artist. It would also be the first worldwide release on Neighborhood Records, the label she and Schekeryk established in 1971 - another first, as she entered territory into which only the Beatles, the Stones and the Moody Blues had previously stepped. Even more crucially, however, it was her personal response to the enormous success, earlier in the year, of the hit “Brand New Key” - “the bicycle song,” as so many people recall it. Stoneground Words returned to the drawing board. Ten songs were selected; the remainder were placed to one side; and the album was released to generally positive reviews which included Melody Maker’s assertion that it was “the most sophisticated she's made. The naiveté of [the past has] been replaced by deeper, more comprehensive methods of expression.” She is the first to admit that the new edition of Stoneground Words is not a true facsimile of the original. The paperwork for all three projects, after all, disappeared long ago, as did the tapes (“who knows where?”)

TRACK LISTING

Side 1

Here I Am
My Rainbow Race
Wild Horses
Summer Weaving
Between The Road Signs

Side 2

Together Alone
Maybe Not For A Lifetime
I Am Being Guided
4I Think It’s Going To Rain Today
The Actress

Side 3

Pretty Boy Floyd
Lovers Cross
Maybe I Was A (Golf Ball)
Song Of The South
I Am Not A Poet
Pine And A Feather

Side 4

Stoneground Words
Do You Believe
Holding Out
Love To Lose Again
Here I Am - Alt Version 

‘Il Viaggio’ is an offering, a quest for musical, physical, and spiritual renewal, born from an emotional memory awakened. Joining the concrete and ambient, it drifts from the natural sounds of a new day towards a dreamed world.

Taking to the road to reinvent oneself is the common thread running through this album, which is organized as a sonic journey in two parts, Lay Your Ear To The Rail (Disc 1) and The Chaos Azure (Disc 2).

TRACK LISTING

1 Lay Your Ear To The Rail
2 Nonnarina
3 Il Vento
4 We Never Kneel To Pray
5 I'm Looking For
6 Mi Ricordo Di Te
7 Chiesa
8 Now Is Narrow
9 San Liberatore
10 The Chaos Azure
11 Alba

Revered composer, pianist, DJ and acknowledged bridge between jazz, dance and hip-hop, Mark de Clive-Lowe (MdCL), links up with jazz vocalist/flautist Melanie Charles and Detroit drummer/producer & DJ, Shigeto on Hotel San Claudio, a collaborative LP of spiritual jazz and live deconstructed beats. Following Melanie Charles’ formidable Verve album Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women and MdCL's lauded 2022 Soul Bank album, Freedom – Celebrating the Music of Pharoah Sanders, the three forward-thinking musicians unite for a sonic exploration across jazz, hip-hop and soulful house.

This project was seeded in Detroit, USA, in 2018 when MdCL (Nubya Garcia, Bugz In The Attic, Ge-Ology), was invited to perform alongside Detroit native Zach Saginaw aka Shigeto (Andrés, Dabrye, Shlohmo) at local spot, MotorCity Wine despite the two having never actually met. Months later, the Italian Fat Fat Fat Festival invited them to open their 2019 programme, yet the duo felt a piece of the puzzle was missing. Enter the “triple threat”, Melanie Charles. Having first connected post-show at a festival in Brooklyn in Oct 2018 MdCL knew Charles was the perfect fit.

In light of Pharoah Sanders passing, there's reinterpre- tations of The Creator Has a Master Plan (Part's 1 & 2) and Love is Everywhere reimagining them for the here and now. Strings speaks to the group’s love of hip-hop, whilst Kanazawa references a love of soulful house, with Charles’ 70s disco/fusion flute solo, leading into a euphoric, climactic outro. Bushido leans even heavier on 70s jazz fusion, MFT showcases Charles’ sublime vocals, affording a vast, celestial quality that stands present throughout Hotel San Claudio. 

TRACK LISTING

01/A1: The Creator Has A Master Plan (Part I)
02/A2: Strings
03/A3: MFT
04/A4: Bushido
05/A5: Interlude (Contorni)
06/B1: Kanazawa
07/B2: Love Is Everywhere
08/B3: Interlude (Digestivo)
09/B4: The Creator Has A Master Plan (Part II)

True concept albums are actually few and far between. While it can be said that The Who’s “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia”, or Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” were designed from the ground up, that’s not necessarily the case for equally mythical, yet composite albums such as Bowie’s “The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust”, or Lou Reed’s “Berlin”. In France, the genre established its pedigree in the 1970s with Serge Gainsbourg, then in the early 1980s with Léo Ferré. “Cri d'amour” by Mélanie Chédeville adds to this list of albums that tell a story through characters.

“Cri d'amour” was produced in a seaside setting, which may explain its flowing, organic character. It is all by herself that the violinist-by-training composed, wrote and arranged this collection of string-drenched songs that recall Jean-Claude Vannier’s work for Serge Gainsbourg. The latter would undoubtedly have been impressed by Mélanie’s fine-cut lyrics and melodies that are as raw as they are sophisticated, vocalized in a sprechgesang recalling his own. The deliberately retro palette, up to the bass sound so typical of 1960s English rock, betrays an artist indebted to the creator of Bonnie & Clyde and Initials B.B. through a sensual, clear tonality. Yet, polyrhythms borrowed from the late Afro-beat legend Tony Allen, and the touches of guitar, piano, percussion and synthesizers distilled here and there by Éric and Mélanie, end up giving the whole affair a resolutely atemporal color.

Mélanie was sixteen with a head full of Beethoven and Brahms when she succumbed to an unexpected fascination for the world of Éric, a pianist, composer and sound engineer, who regularly delivered scores for Marc Dorcel’s X-rated films. She evokes him in “L'Alpha-bêta” and “Le Pornographe”, through whispered choruses that would suit the late Julee Cruise or Vanessa Daou to a tee, and explicit allusions to a ‘sword of Damocles’ of ‘XXL’ dimensions.

These are not the only texts on this album that remind us of the Franco-American author Anaïn Nin’s erotic poems, a model that Mélanie willingly takes on, adding to the list of her literary influences alongside Apollinaire and his Debauched Hospodar:

Some may find this album old-fashioned, which, far from being a flaw, is a credit to the fine musician that Mélanie is. Others will call it a charming album, which is not a bad way to describe it, provided that it is a powerfully relentless charm.

TRACK LISTING

A1 - Mélanie
A2 - L’Alpha Beta
A3 - It’s Not Too Late
A4 - Paris
A5 - La Folia
A6 - Le Pornographe
A7 - La Belle Histoire
B1 - Nausica
B2 - Le Soleil
B3 - Cri D'amour
B4 - C’est Dans L’Air
B5 - Folk Silencio
B6 - Les Croisés

Melanie De Biasio received the Best Session Award at the 10th Worldwide Awards, which took place recently in London. The award is for De Biasio’s stunning 2014 live session on Gilles Peterson’s BBC 6Music show.

A huge fan of the Belgian singer, Peterson has curated a new remix version of her acclaimed album ‘No Deal’. He called upon some of the most exciting names across the jazz, electronic and indie worlds for ‘No Deal Remixed’, including EELS, The Cinematic Orchestra, Hex and Seven Davis Jr.

Says Peterson; “To my mind, of all the new artists around, the most remix friendly has to be Melanie De Biasio. For a person like me with a DJ mind, the minimalism of ‘No Deal’ makes it perfect. I’ve been dropping ‘I Feel You’ on top of beats anyway and even played ‘I’m Gonna Leave You’ in its original form when the moment arose - it’s such a pure track. In fact the first thing I did on meeting Melanie for the first time this year was to ask her who produced the album. It was me she replied... so not just a pretty voice!”

TRACK LISTING

I Feel You (EELS Remix)
The Flow (Hex Remix)
No Deal (Seven Davis Jr Remix)
With Love / Sweet Darling Pain (Gilles Peterson & Sinbad Remix)
Sweet Darling Pain (Chassol Remix)
I’m Gonna Leave You (Clap! Clap! Remix)
With All My Love (Jonwayne Remix)
I’m Gonna Leave You (The Cinematic Orchestra Remix)