'Afro Blue' has become such a standard of modern jazz that there are scores of versions out there in the ether: from congalero Mongo Santamaria's original to John Coltrane's celebrated 1963 recording to a stunning version by the late Philadelphian guitarist Monnette Sudler on her album Meeting Of The Spirits. This version, though, live at the annual Marciac jazz festival in south-west France, is as cool as a cucumber in Ray-Bans and simply mesmerising.
I only caught up with Mélanie De Biasio a year or so ago. I thought she was French. She's actually the daughter of a Belgian mother and an Italian father, born in Charleroi, a former centre of Belgium's coal mining industry, but now seemingly a modern, progressive city (so it would be unfair of me to mention – if memory serves me well – that it was once the site of some notorious paedophile ring). Not exclusively a jazz singer, she has toured with the unclassifiable American singer Eels and is a fan of Portishead. There is indeed something about her vocal style that recalls Beth Gibbons, as well as that most minimal of vocalists, the late Mark Hollis, once lead singer of Talk Talk. In fact, her riveting and singular singing voice apparently evolved serendipitously from a pulmonary infection that affected her ability to sing for a year. Which just goes to show how a creative artist can overcome setbacks and turn defeat into victory.
With her flute and sylph-like physique, she comes across as a kind of Pan figure on stage. Her lightness of foot and sinuous arm movements are not affectations, but those of a trained dancer. She learnt ballet it seems from age 3. Her flute playing is a welcome addition to the backing of piano, keyboards and drums, and enhances the dreamlike quality of this performance. You don’t quite know where it’s going at first, as she wanders lonely as a cloud, almost searching for a melody on the flute. But then the keyboard drone and the beautiful brushed drumming lay down the sheet of sound which her breathy vocal cuts through. Then, imperceptibly and fabulously, the acoustic piano adds to the equation and things come to a more vigorous simmer. She adds quotes on the flute from Coltrane’s version of ‘My Favourite Things’ to the main theme, so that the two melodies cohere organically. And as it threatens to build to a climax, it all quietens down again, waking us gently from our reverie. I awoke from mine to mouth the word ‘wow’. And wow and wow again.
Mélanie De Biasio has sometimes been labelled the Belgian Billie Holiday. While there’s something reminiscent of the way the latter quietly explores the words and feeling of songs like ‘Good Morning Heartache’ and ‘I Cover The Waterfront’, there’s very little about the Belgian singer’s approach to a song that suggests any more than a passing influence. To my ears, her sound is informed far more by Talk Talk’s fragile and delicate Spirit Of Eden album, or Mark Hollis’ even more fragile solo work. It’s intimate, sensuous music that seems to be all about exploring the space between the notes. If it weren’t so straightforward and intelligible, it could be the musical equivalent perhaps of quantum physics.
Harriet Gibsone’s Guardian review of the singer’s 2014 album, No Deal, puts her finger on it when she writes of her ‘transcendent songs that seem to suspend time.’ In this wonderful performance, Mélanie De Biasio stretches the four and a half minutes of the recorded version of ‘Afro Blue’ on her album Lilies to almost double that length. I was so spellbound, so transfixed, I wouldn’t have quibbled if she and her band had spun it out to three times more.
