Tell me five things you know about Malawi? Ok you give in – it’s an ex British colony, it’s in south-east Africa, the capital city is Lilongwe, it’s landlocked between Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique and it’s the home country of Malia. I imagine you may have heard of Malawi but you probably haven’t heard of Malia.

Tears Run Dry comes from the 2014 album, Convergence produced by Yello’s Boris Blank. I’m sure you know that Yello were Swiss and played some kind of Electronic Pop in the video era, so this seems like an odd match. In fact it’s a marriage made in heaven with Malia’s rich voice and Blank’s sophisticated production and spacious music, the album  credited to both of them. It’s moody sophisticated Electronic Jazz and Malia’s voice has that smokey tone and warm controlled vibrato drawing you in with her dark tones. I’d love to hear her sing with Massive Attack.

Convergence follow’s Malia’s third album, Black Orchid, an hommage to Nina Simone released in 2012 . She calls this album Electronic Gospel with Boris Blank’s emotional electronics skirting the borders of Pop and consequently it might not be the kind of record that those of you that frequent the In Deep Music Archive would normally entertain but that’s why the archive is here and I assure you that this record comes highly recommended – by me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malia_(singer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Blank_(musician)