Blue

No Saturday live today, in place the brand new release from Jezebell, out yesterday and available at Bandcamp. Last summer’s Jezebell soundtrack was the ten minute Ibizan odyssey of Jezebellaeric. This summer Jesse and Darren have gone a step further, twelve minutes of blissed out Balearica that keeps on giving the more you play it. Jezeblue surfs the waves as they gently break on the shore. Building slowly, it floats in with padding drums, synths, ripples of sound and then a voice in the distance singing, ‘oh baby, come take me’. Gradually the groove finds its way to the front of the mix and then piano takes the lead, two chords playing off as the sun goes down. 

As much as it is about melody, groove and feel, Jezeblue seems to be in some way about memory, fragments of former lives, glimpses of the past, past events that reverberate in our minds in the small hours, and how they pull at us- not nostalgia necessarily but those memories that make us who we are now. Somehow it seems to contain all of that in the voice, the piano and the rhythms. Well into the second half there are synth stabs that push those buttons too, remnants of classic house reused for summer 2023. 

As well as the full twelve minute version there are two other versions of the song. Jezeblue (Slight Return) is a six and a half minute version with the synth stabs leading from the start, the pianos and drums layered, everything a bit more together.  The Blue Bell Edit is even more blissed out, bass, synths and piano and the vocal all rippling gently towards the sunset.