Abrahamblue is a Belgium-based musician whose desire to escape the everyday trappings of modern urban life in Antwerp led him to turn to music making. Having felt overwhelmed, Abrahamblue says, “Life just felt like a race, city life was overwhelming”. Music became his escape:
“It reminded me how I felt when I quit school at 17 to chase my dreams, with nobody to show me the way, so I had to learn to play all the instruments myself.”
As a person, Abrahamblue is familiar with the experience of being an outsider. Born to Syrian-Palestinian parents, he moved to the city of Antwerp when he was just five. Without access to a TV, his cultural experience was focused on classic Arabic singers, leading him to experience an identity crisis which made him unable to feel the security of home.
In time, music became Abrahamblue’s path out of his uncertainty — James Brown and Michael Jackson exposed him to pop music, and the myriad of genres that converge on it. In time, he discovered Miles Davis, and from there got deeper into jazz, bossanova, hip-hop and soul, before eventually starting to teach himself how to play.
You, Abrahamblue’s latest release, rides on a soft and melodic cloud of gentle melancholy. The vocals convey an easy-going earnestness, the emotional gravity front and centre. At the same time, there is an easiness that dispels any notion of melodrama.
The style of Abrahamblue’s performance on You reminds me of André 3000’s flow — artistically embellishing the music’s emotion without making it feel like a ‘performance’. It suits the jazz-like free form experimentalism on display here — the vocal is part of the music, another instrument to convey feeling, as opposed to being above the music or dominating it. The result feels natural, like slipping on someone else’s coat and deciding it suits you better than your own. Abrahamblue brings me into his emotional truth, one of longing met with slight uncertainty, and suddenly, it feels like mine.