'She Owns The Night: Vanessa Daou Interviewed' on The Quietus

jonny mugwump talks to the New York based songstress about speakeasies, rave culture and the poem/song divide

"A collaboration between the New York-based Vanessa and her then husband Peter with words adapted by Vanessa from Peter's aunt, the pioneering Erica Jong, Zipless is a beautiful trove of sublime erotic electronic pop with strong elements of house and jazzy melodies. And as anybody who loves pop music knows, there can be more subversiveness in the space of a three minute adrenaline shot of pop than in vast swathes of the avant-garde. The almost surreal intimacy of Vanessa's voice and delivery (like Dali's melting watches, every vocal shape seemed to take on a slight alien quality) coupled with the intense sexuality of the lyrics and the accessibility and ingenuity of the music made for an entirely unique hybrid. Vanessa and Peter had previously released the highly innovative Head Music as The Daou, had worked with NuGroove and had had a huge club hit with a Danny Tenaglia mix of 'Surrender Yourself'. Originally released independently, Zipless led to the duo being signed to MCA and Vanessa toured with the legendary recently departed Guru and Jazzmatazz.

The follow-up album Slow to Burn saw her negotiating her way out of her own big label contract for a life on the independent margins where she could retain control. Cut to 2009, with a succession of always morphing productions exploring a weird ambient hinterland between ambient pop, jazz, soul and electronica, Vanessa returned after a hiatus, polymath-like moving into multimedia production, dance, computer coding and the release of her first self-produced album Joe Sent Me. "Joe Sent Me" was the coded phrase used to gain entry to speakeasys at the height of prohibition-era America and her latest work is both more sonically sophisticated and spacious yet also more dreamy. Each album has always had a loose kind of thematic concern but Joe Sent Me is different, creating a gently strange portal between now and then, constructing a distinctive world of its own but without sacrificing the depth of insight into what makes a heartbeat.

Perhaps it's not immediately obvious but I've always thought of your music as being quite surreal, primarily (until the current album anyway) due to your vocals. The voice is so intimately placed in the mix so that's completely inside the listener's head, and it puts me in mind of the beautiful paradox of the microphone and people like Frank Sinatra where a vocal can sit clearly on top of music that would otherwise completely obliterate it.

Vanessa Daou: When I first started singing, for me, it's this weird communication between a singer and a microphone. It's this object that is conveying your voice but the experience of being in a sound proof room singing a song, it is surreal - you're cut off from the music that's being played in your headphones and singing in to this object. Right from the offset, well, I had to work out what the relationship was with this object - the microphone - so I visualise it as an ear. I'm singing into an ear and I still carry that image with me now when I sing, never forgetting that I'm not singing out to the air but that I'm singing into somebody's ear who will be receiving my...message. This relationship, I don't know if it's a metaphysical thing that every artist goes through, but it's very profound."

Link to full interview on The Quietus

Remembering Guru

It was during my tour for 'Zipless' opening for 'Jazzmatazz' in '95 that I got to know Guru - His extreme intelligence & exceptional talent was ever-present, he was fearless with his voice & creative vision. An immense loss to lovers of Jazz, Hip-Hop, Poetry, artists everywhere.

The New York Times & All About Jazz have solid pieces on his life, career, & achingly beautiful written letter to fans, friends, and loved ones.

Ben Williams @Codesignal streams his in depth 2009 interview here with the legendary Jazz-Rapper pioneer.

The Female, Nude

"Nudity is oddly taboo..." 'Art Stripped Bare - Fionna Banner on the Nude'

In November '09, I heard/saw Collin Kelley read from his new novel 'Conquering Venus' at The Tank in Manhattan. The intimacy of the space provided a perfect setting for the tenor & spirit of the novel which takes place, largely, in a Hotel room in Paris and the apartment of a woman the protagonist befriends to whom he finds himself irrevocably drawn. It is in these rooms where secrets are both withheld and revealed, where hearts come apart at the seams as soon as they are stitched up again.

What is withheld, what is revealed, this is the crux of Venus' seductive allure. Historically, the female body, once unclothed, is observed, critiqued, demystified, devoured. But the fact is, no matter the setting - whether in nature, in bed, on a pedestal or in a highly stylized room - the female nude, stands in contrast to whatever the surroundings. Artists have explored the potentialities of this contrast since the first [European] female nude was painted.

The female nude continues to fascinate, frustrate, and awe, this is especially true in this age of virtual - and therefore intangible - culture. The 'Storybook Burlesque' attested to this is their provocative set of 'literary burlesque' performances which punctuated various authors' readings at The Tank.

The Concretes' cover of the Rolling Stones' 'Miss You' provided the soundtrack to one of the standout performances. The pairing of Burlesque with Rock 'n Roll is a natural one: a certain illicit delirium sets in while listening and looking. The combination of the literary with the 'lewd' has traditionally chagrined as many as it has charmed, as the history of banned books, for instance, has proven.

There have been numerous Novelists, Poets, Philosophers, Artists, and Singer-Songwriters who have tackled the dual-natured subjects of the physical body with the philosophical and psychological - Anaiis Nin, Henry Miller, Erica Jong, Ovid, Sappho, ee cummings, Simone de Beauvoir, Dominique Aury, Michael Foucault, Camille Paglia, Marina Abramovic, Leonard Cohen, PJ Harvey - and who among us hasn't wondered why, given that we are all born naked, is the subject of nudity so unyieldingly taboo?

The good news is, nudity's taboo nature seems to be a code that's written in the matrix of our psyches and physical selves, and will forever provide fodder for Artists, Thinkers and Theorists. It could be argued that our very existence depends on this attraction to the female nude's forbidden essence.

There will always be those who oppose the presentation of unclothed and exposed flesh in all forms - and while exploitation is the dark side of all things taboo - the female, nude, in all its raw and uncensored forms, goes to the core of our freedom's expression.

So, back at The Tank, what struck me so powerfully about the Storybook Burlesque was, simply, the fact that in this day and age of touch-of-a-button triple-X virtuality, the female, nude, is still oddly taboo.

Author Graham Reid on 'Zipless'

"There is sexy music and there is sex music.

And there can be quite a difference between the two in execution.

Prince made a lot of sex music but slightly less sexy music; Donna Summer and Jane Birkin brought orgasms to music -- and so did Yoko Ono who screamed it to the ceiling and beyond.

Ono was sex, the other two sexy. Sometimes Grace Jones could be both.

Sexy music -- the stuff you might want to play while engaging with someone while the lights are dimmed and the phone is off the hook -- will come in many forms. Doubtless you know someone for whom Tool or Linkin Park is their ideal sex music. I'm pleased to say I don't think I do.

But when it comes to mood pieces for "that" moment then there are the ever reliables such as Miles Davis' Kind of Blue or the soundtrack to The Hot Spot where Davis teamed up with John Lee Hooker to deliver something very sultry and sex-soaked.

Into this world of steamy windows and heavy breathing came Vanessa Daou, an American multi-talent (painter, poet and dancer) whose Zipless album was inspired by the work of her husband/producer Peter's aunt Erica Jong who wrote of the "zipless fuck" in her '73 novel Fear of Flying.

Vanessa Daou had come from the electronica underground in New York and she'd almost perfected a more sensual style which made Sade sound vapid and asexual. Daou was a heavy breather in the manner of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg's Je t'aime, but also brought a poetic spin to things.

....

Electronica beats keep their distance, a saxophone eases in from down the corridor, pianos play slow and sensuously, and everywhere is Daou's remarkable voice spinning out poetry worth reading or barely suggesting melodies as if she is too sated to rouse herself fully.

It is about carnal need as much as sexual passion and delight, and sometimes a wish not to be driven by such fevers: "I think I can live without it, love with its pumping blood ... sex with its messy hungers" she speak-sings unconvincingly on Becoming a Nun.

This is electronica erotica, aural sex and the perfect soundtrack to . . .

Well, not doing dishes.

It is, as they say, an album for "special occasions".

Enjoy."

Graham Reid is an award winning writer & journalist - In 2005 Graham wrote a book of travel stories published by Random House, Postcards from Elsewhere which won the Whitcoulls Travel Book of the Year award in 2006.

Read his full post on Zipless on his blog Elsewhere

A special Electro Lounge Live now featuring Vanessa Daou 89.9 FM NPR

Stream it!

David Luckin's Electro Lounge Playlist:

February 19, 2010

9:00) Miroslav Vitous – New York City

9:09) Manifesto – Vanessa Daou

9:12) Santana – Welcome (by John Coltrane)

9:20) Vanessa Daou – Black & White

9:24) Vanessa Daou – Consequences

9:28) Weather Report – Will

9:33) Club Des Belugas – Hip Hip Chin Chin

9:38) Ken Nordine – Sidewalks

9:41) Vanessa Daou – Joe Sent Me

9:45) Vanessa Daou – Hurricanes

9:48) Vanessa Daou – Life Force

9:53) Ken Nordine – Tears

Hour 2

10:00) Vanessa Daou – True

10:02) Ken Nordine – When You’re Born

10:03) Noir – Late Night Rendez-Vous

10:07) Vanessa Daou – The Hook

10:10) Vanessa Daou – Love Lives In The Dark

10:16) Duke Ellington & John Coltrane – In A Sentimental Mood

10:19) Joni Mitchell & Wayne Shorter – Moon At The Window

10:22) Alice Coltrane – Journey In Satchidanaanda

10:29) Vanessa Daou – Save Yourself

10:31) Vanessa Daou – The Poem

10:41) Freddie Hubbard – Lonely Soul

10:46) Vanessa Daou – Once In A While

10:51) Vanessa Daou – Heart Of Wax

10:55) Vanessa Daou – The Hook (reprise)

10:56) Frank Sinatra – Put Your Dreams Away