Marion Rampal - Main Blue (2016)

Beneath the chromium skies of a rediscovered New Orleans, Marion Rampal has carved simple, meteoric songs of love and betrayal, of storms and uprisings. Main Blue was forged in the deep cerulean fires of the Louisiana Bayou, an unfiltered expression of the many sounds and rhythms of the Delta.

Singer Marion Rampal is part of a young french Jazz scene un afraid of blending influences. As a songwriter, she was born from her intersecting passions for Jim Morrisson, Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell, and out of a teenage-hood spent compulsively filling song books with American lyrics. Her first adventures in Rock and Folk territory would later take her into the lands of Jazz and the African-American lyrical tradition, under the structuring influences (and guidance) of Archie Shepp and Raphaël Imbert. In 2009, her first solo album - Own Virago - came as a detonating surprise.

The singular, threnoding melodies of Main Blue were composed during a voyage across the U.S. mainland, shaped by shared memories and the soul of the land. Inspired by the mischievous tongues of the Cajuns and the French Creoles, Marion created her own, the coeurs coulés, a blend of half-forgotten vocables flowing down the river of Time like an undiscovered Mississipi. Vivacious and untamed, Marion's voice explores the continuum between tradition and invention, heady melodies and improvisation, from contained emotions to a brazenly Soul exuberance.

Fairy drummer Anne Paceo - 2016 french Jazz Victories' Artist of the Year - and Rhodes-Chief Pierre-François Blanchard fuel the fire with potent grooviness, drawing from an implacable surge from the deep past. > > Main Blue is an anthem to Blues as an emotional highway, and an unlikely crossroads of complementary inspirations : the tale of a time when songs, tongues and rhythms flew down rivers and crossed the ocean.

Marion RAMPAL: Vocal
Pierre-François BLANCHARD: Fender Rhodes, Keyboards
Anne PACEO: Drums