Melodi Ghazal – Idol Melodies
Melodi Ghazal releases her debut full-length album Idol Melodies via Anyines. Across 10 tracks, she merges Iranian folk and ’80s pop.
Melodi Ghazal’s output is reflective. The Copenhagen native was raised by Iranian parents, and an interest in music was nurtured at cultural gatherings. As a child, she delved into pre-revolutionary Iranian hits and the Los Angeles pop that emerged in the 1980s and ‘90s. Later, she discovered hitmakers including Dido and Celine Dion on VH1 and MTV. At her mother’s encouragement, she took up piano lessons.
Ghazal fell into stasis for almost a decade. “I stopped quite abruptly with the occurrence of my self-consciousness, especially about otherness in a very white context,” she remembers. “I felt a need to be anonymous.” She enrolled in university, but grew depressed working a day job. During one down swing, she felt the desire to write songs again and started an adult education program. Two years later, she was accepted at the groundbreaking Rhythmic Music Conservatory — a school that counts ML Buch, Astrid Sonne, and Clarissa Connelly as alumni.
Ghazal’s full-length debut, Idol Melodies, is titled in reference to spiritual symbolism and a yearning to dissolve oneself. The album materialized gradually, with initial daf frame drum ideas sparking as part of her thesis at RMC. Allowing intuition to guide, tracks began with elements ranging from riffs to synthesizer presets. On a trip to London, she collaborated with Anyines label founder Villads Klint (Minais B) and NTS resident Coby Sey. Peter Bruhn Rasmussen contributed electric guitar, while Albert Hertz played acoustic. Rising Danish songwriter Fine Glindvad was a consultant in the final stages. “In the process of writing songs, I am always navigating a feeling of longing that appears when the melody is right,” she says. The end result is spry and mercurial, echoing keyboards and downtempo grooves cloaked in fuzz.
Idol Melodies is catchy and eclectic, inspired by Sufi dervishes, Madonna’s conversion to Kabbalah, and Googoosh’s displacement. “I have paraphrased Hafez in several places throughout the album and worked with circular movements in the productions,” Ghazal shares. On “Destinies and Melodies,” she sings of surrendering to inexplicable forces that yield creativity.
Atop the silvery strums of “Numb,” she decompresses from a challenging period in which loved ones were hurt.
“In My Room” is the tenderest moment, using adolescent introversion to probe a relationship with newly immigrated parents. The whole record is sonically direct, yet emotionally textured.
Weaving Middle Eastern percussion and English-Persian vocals, Ghazal cultivates protectivity. Associative streams impact a journey of self-dissolution and connection. “Something had been simmering in me, and it came out in the underlying melancholy and searching,” she muses. A current of change steers Idol Melodies, which ruminates on a breakup, personal crisis, and ensuing transformation. Flowering between stretches of malaise, Idol Melodies shrouds storminess in magic.
#melodighazal