>> The Beauty Room
bio: Vocalist JINADU and producer KIRK DEGIORGIO first collaborated on the AS ONE album ‘21st Century Soul’ (Ubiquity Recordings) in 2001. Both have worked mainly in the electronic dance genre – recording for a wide range of labels from Mo’ Wax to Bitches Brew. The Beauty Room came about through continued collaboration, with Degiorgio sending Jinadu sketches of songs with increasingly unusual progressions. Jinadu worked his magic and returned them enhanced with catchy melodies, hooks galore and layers of rich harmonies. The Beauty Room marks a notable stylistic shift for both Jinadu and Degiorgio. A debut single – a deft adaptation of Jan Hammer’s classic ‘Don’t You Know’ - was recently released on Parlophone’s New Religion offshoot and while it may have been a typically teasing Degiorgio hors d’oeuvre, it’s in the shape of a self titled album that the Beauty Room present their full, lavish feast.
Opener ‘Soul Horizon’ sets the tone; its lulling acoustic guitar intro presaging a phalanx of Jinadu harmonies which usher in a melodic reverie of a song that could be a gently billowing outtake from the first Crosby Stills and Nash album. It’s a languorous intoxication that continues as the album gathers its own mellow pace. Everywhere, Jinadu’s harmonies weave, glide and plunge around the rippling guitars of (fellow Peacefrog artist) Ian O’Brien, marble smooth keyboards courtesy of Thomas O’Grady, Chris Whitten’s crisp but discretely funky drums and Degiorgio’s babbling electronic undercurrents.
‘Holding On’ is a deft, soulful Fender Rhodes ballad, with a chorus that sticks like superglue; ‘The Weight Of The World’ again nods to CSN at their most transcendent, while ‘Shades Of Yesterday’, with Degiorgio adroitly taking care of vocal duties, is an intimate, hypnotic confessional, with a redemptive, string-caressed refrain. ‘Fortress’, meanwhile, could very nearly be a Coldplay ballad – albeit it a spectacularly sensitive one.
There’s an undeniable sense of timeless urban sophistication at play here. Indeed, this album most readily brings to mind those high priests of the cerebral groove, Steely Dan. What The Beauty Room achieve here is a similar blend of sharp-creased strut and spiritual meditation, all of it laced with plenty of that most essential yet indefinable alchemical element, soul.
Fans of singer/songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and the whole late sixties/early seventies West Coast scene, should also be hastily marshalled toward this beguiling distillation of downtempo eloquence, for while the overall mood is smooth and mellifluous, this is by no means lightweight music – far from it. There are lyrical stones tossed into the millpond tranquillity of a track like the string-propelled Burn My Bridges (“I retreat to your agenda/my resistance confounded”) or the beguiling Visions of Joy ("Sometimes you’ll try to tear off your disguise, revealing something new / The image you once loved, the lies you thought you knew."), proving that while this is undoubtedly music to chill to, it’s certainly not aimed at those with either heart or brain in the deep freeze.
Warm, human and - as you’ll have guessed form Degiorgio and Jinadu’s chosen band moniker - spaciously beautiful, The Beauty Room will take you on a journey past wonderfully familiar landmarks to a place you’ve never quite been before.
