Description
Dead Belgian is a Liverpool-based band playing the music of Jacques Brel. Their debut album, 'LOVE & DEATH: THE SONGS OF JACQUES BREL was recorded and mixed at Limefield Studios, Manchester, by John Ellis and Bill Leader. Bill was honoured at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in February 2012 with the Good Tradition Award, in recognition of his lifetime of achievement in British folk music. Dead Belgian began life in 2007, inspired to share Brel's music with all who would listen. Each member brought their own influences to the band, from European folk to progressive rock, stripping the songs to their bare bones and fattening them up again using a ramshackle drum kit, ukulele, guitar, accordion, saxophone, mandolin, clarinet and flute.
Dead Belgian have developed a playful and inventive sound that meshes dense melodic patterns, demonic waves of intensity and passages of sparse frailty with vocals that have drawn comparison to Edith Piaf, Anthony Hegarty and Nico. It is a sound unique to them while still capturing the beauty, passion and humour of the original work, a rousing and rowdy backporch reinvention of Jacques Brel's honest and poetic stories.