About
Dez Mona are a Belgian band from Antwerp whose sound sits somewhere between jazz, gospel, spirituals and dramatic art song, built around the striking vocal range of singer Gregory Frateur and the double bass of Nicolas Rombouts. The name comes from Desdemona, the ill fated wife from Shakespeare's Othello, which gives you a fair sense of the mood. Listeners and critics alike tend to reach for comparisons like Nina Simone, Marianne Faithfull and Antony and the Johnsons doing Tom Waits material. Their third album Hilfe Kommt was produced by Paul Webb of Talk Talk, better known as Rustin Man, and the collaboration brought a new texture to their sound. The 2011 project Saga was co created with baroque ensemble B.O.X. and sits somewhere between opera and a song cycle, staged with costume design by Véronique Branquinho. By that point the band had already made history as the first act to play Ancienne Belgique in Brussels without a record out.