Katie Melua

Violinist, composer, and Grammy Award-winning sound engineer, Simon Goff, has teamed up with acclaimed, multi-platinum-selling singer-songwriter, Katie Melua, and announced their forthcoming collaborative album, "Aerial Objects".

English listeners went mad for Katie Melua with the release of her debut album in late 2003. Issued domestically in June 2004, Call Off the Search posits the lovely Melua pristinely in between pop, adult contemporary, and traditional American musical forms, with savvy marketing handling the finishing touches. (Think Norah Jones.) It's a comfortable, lightly melodic affair that drinks red wine safely in the middle of the road. Raised in Soviet Georgia and the United Kingdom, Melua has a beguiling accent that colors the ends of her phrases, adding character to her velvety, if occasionally only satisfactory singing voice.

Having reunited with her longtime mentor, former Wombles singer/songwriter Mike Batt, for her 2012 symphonic album, Secret Symphony, vocalist Katie Melua continues in an orchestral vein with her sixth studio album, 2013's Ketevan. Much like its predecessor, Ketevan is a languid, often cinematic-sounding album that builds upon Melua's talents as an interpreter of other people's material as well as her own songs. Having taken a creative detour to work with electronic producer William Orbit for 2010's The House, Melua once again returns to her roots as Batt's protégée. Raised in the Eastern European state of Georgia, Melua moved with her family to England when she was eight.

With a voice that sounds like a more mainstream version of the late jazz cult superstar Eva Cassidy and smoky raven-haired looks to rival a movie lot's worth of young ingénues, it's a bit of a surprise that Katie Melua has remained so unknown in the United States, despite the chart success the Eastern European-born songstress has achieved in her adopted home of the United Kingdom. It seems like she should be at least as popular as, say, Regina Spektor or Nellie McKay. Pictures may not help that much, however, because in comparison to its fairly straightforward jazz-tinged singer/songwriter predecessors, Melua's third album takes a bit of a left turn into the self-consciously quirky. It's a wonder that it took so long, because Melua's producer and part-time songwriter is Mike Batt, a minor legend of the U.K. music scene who has fashioned a decades-long career out of deliberate eccentricity…

A gorgeously rendered holiday-themed effort, In Winter finds singer/songwriter Katie Melua backed by the 25-member Gori Women's Choir. The album is Melua's seventh studio production and first since parting ways with longtime collaborator Mike Batt. Recorded in her native country of Georgia (Melua left with her parents at age nine), In Winter is a lushly produced, thoughtfully conceived album featuring arrangements by esteemed choral composer Bob Chilcott. An acclaimed institution, the Gori Women's Choir are famous for their haunting classical harmonies. They prove a superb match for Melua, who both sings along with the choir and frames herself against its angelic, delicately layered harmonies.

Katie Melua [2007] - Pictures
Genre: Smooth Jazz/Pop | Quallity: lossless, FLAC | 44:38 min | 260 Mb

The one thing that I’ve learnt from making three albums is that you don’t know what is going to happen when you start recording. The fact that I am a bit older, have different interests, have more experiences, and that I have grown and developed as an artist means that this album would be different in some way from the first two. I would not want to just try and emulate the success of the previous albums but I also don’t feel the need to change for change’s sake or to please anyone other than myself.

Katie Melua