(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Born and raised in the Virgin Islands, Vanessa Daou was launched onto the dance-music scene by her husband Peter, who produced and composed the music. Head Music (Columbia) gave them a brief popularity in the 1992 club scene, but the couple captured media attention with Zipless (Lotus, 1994), a collection of songs built around erotic texts by Erica Jong, sung in the singer’s sensual whisper and arranged in a sophisticated manner according to the conventions of danceable soul-jazz. The operation, straddling the line between intellectual and danceable, produces its most compelling effects in the more blurred moments: in ballads of dreamlike, hallucinatory desire such as Near The Black Forest, in arcane recitations over surreal backdrops like Alcestis On The Poetry Circuit or Autumn Perspective, rather than in the livelier songs, such as the Caribbean tremor of Long Tunnel Of Wanting You.

Slow To Burn (Krasnow, 1996), a concept album dedicated to great singers of the past, offers more new age jazz, rococo` synthesizers and erudite poetry (Two To Tango).