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AXELLE RED

For more audio-files, biography and - most important - photos of  the beautiful and talented Axelle Red, you can visit the artist's very nice official WWW pages: www.axelle-red.com. The description below is based on the biography presented at her website.

 
Songs
 

"Kennedy Boulevard"
33,7 sec. - 66 Kb.
song : R. Seff, D. Seff
Produced : R. Seff
Year : 1990
Record co. : BMG-Ariola

"Elle danse seule"
54,4 sec. - 107 Kb.
song : Richard Seff
Produced : W. Van Belle
Year : 1992
Record co. : Virgin

"Sensualité"
29,5 sec. - 58 Kb.
song : Albert Hammond
Produced : W. Van Belle
Year : 1992
Record co. : Virgin

"Je t'attends"
22,8 sec. - 45 Kb.
song : R. Seff, D. Seff
Produced : W. Van Belle
Year : 1992
Record co. : Virgin

"Deja me ser mujer"
1 min 29 sec. - 174 Kb.
Year : 1998
Record co. : Virgin

songs uit "Toujours Moi"
(klik voor meer)

 

 
   

Although originally from Hasselt in the Flemish part of Limburg, Axelle Red (on her first releases, the artist name is simply "Axelle", but even that is an artist name, her real name is Fabienne Demal) is about the coolest French-singing artists on the planet today.

Very ambitious from the start, Axelle had a first taste of success at the age of 15 with a single, "Little Girls", which entered the Top 30 charts.

 

In 1989 she released her 'real' first single, "Kennedy Boulevard". It did well in the charts as did the follow-up, "Aretha et moi". Axelle Red had arrived at the scene.

Never one to rush into things, Axelle took time out to go to drama school and finished her studies in law (in 1993) at the Flemish University of Brussels.

Nooit geneigd zich halsoverkop in iets te storten, nam Axelle een time-out om naar de kunstacademie te gaan en haar studie rechten aan de V.U.B. te voltooien.

Her first album took two years to prepare. 'Sans plus attendre' spent more than a year in the Belgian album Top 20, earning her triple platinum (135.000 copies). But the bubble didn't only burst over here; across the border in France, it was the same story, but in triplicate. 350.000 copies changed hands over the shop counters, again certifying it platinum, and at the last count this still popular debut album can be heard in more than half a million European homes.

 

The first single to be released from the album, 'Elle danse seule' is an ideal promotion tool, leading to TV appearances and heavy airplay. But it's the second single, "Sensualité", with music of Albert Hammond, that makes Axelle Red break through. Charting high in Belgium and Switzerland and France where it is the best selling single in '94 and also eclipses every other artist for its staying power in the hit parade.

During the '94/'95 concert season, Axelle worked on her live act, got a band together and played more then a hundred concerts in Belgium, France, Switzerland and Canada.

In the spring of '95 legendary Memphis singer and producer Isaac Hayes (the man from "Theme from Shaft", but also the co-writer of songs as Soul Man, Hold on I'm coming ...) invited her to Memphis, the city of Elvis, Otis, Sun records and Stax records. The list of guest musicians on the second album "A tâtons" reads like a who's who of soul music: Steve Cropper on guitar (Booker T & the MG's plus co-writer on most of Otis Redding's hits including 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay'), Roger Hawkins on drums (Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, etc.), Willie Weeks on bass (too many to mention) and pianist/arranger Lester Snell who's worked with Isaac Hayes for the past 25 years and Mavis Staples.

 

'A tâtons', the result of Axelle's trip back to the roots, is quite probably the first soul album completely sung in French. Although the initial reception for the album was lukewarm, the album proved to be a "slow-grower" (two years later the album stands at 300.000 copies sold). It also spotlights her development as a fully-fledged writer and producer.

1997 saw Axelle performing for the first time in the legendary Paris Olympia. 1998 however proved to be more momentous :
- Axelle got married (to her manager)
- She got pregnant (consequence of 1)
- She turned 30 (just as I did)
- She performed the song "La cour des grands" at the worldcup soccer opening ceremony together with Youssou N'Dour (remember "Seven seconds" with Neneh Cherry). Although this show is rumored to have been watched by 1.000.000.000 viewers, it was so bad that most of these will have been away by the time that 2 1/2 second that Axelle was singing and "in the picture".
- She recorded an album "Con solo pensarlo" with Spanish versions of the songs from her first two french albums. Surprisingly enough, the album didn't bring a lot of excitement in Spain, but broke a lot of sales records here in Belgium.
- She hosted two shows (one in Antwerp & one in Paris) called "The Soul of Axelle Red", with the soullegends she has been talking about so much (Sam & Dave, Isaac Hayes, Ann Peebles, Percy Sledge ...).

1999 saw the release of her (real) third album "Toujours Moi" (it had been finished for quite some time, but had been waiting for the sales figures of the previous ones to drop a little). For this one, she took all the strings into her own hands (she even did the production herself). Despite a strong start (French fans were so eager the album went from nothing to n°1 in the French album charts), this cd was a bit more pale than the previous one, hampered also by the fact that Axelle - who had just given birth - kept the promotion to a low level. Singles from the album were "Ce Matin", "Faire des mamours","Bimbo à moi" and the beautiful "Parce que c'est toi".

One week after she performed the last concert of her year-long tour promoting "Toujours Moi", at the prestigious venue that is the Olympia in Paris, and just a few days after she was one of the ravishing guests at Arno's Amnesty-benefit here in Brussels (she did a version of TC Matic's "Que Pasa", and a duet with Stephan Eicher in "Lean On Me"), Axelle Red is releasing her fourth album.
"Alive" is her first live album, recorded on various "etappes" of the French tour in 2000, and it spans songs from her entire career (songlist = sensualité, Ce Matin, A Tâtons, A quoi ça sert, Elle danse seule, Le monde tourne mal, Just the 2 of us, A 82 ans, Parce que c'est toi, La réponse, Ma prière, Je t'attends, Aretha et moi, Rester Femme). Even more interesting is the fact that the first batch of the CD's is a limited edition, that comes with an extra DVD, containing a really large amount of images/film from during the concerts, live, backstage and other unreleased photo material or shoots (1,5 hours in all).
You can buy the limited edition CD of Axelle Red "Alive" already at.

Buy CD's by this artist at proxis

Albums :
- Sans plus attendre (Virgin, 1992)
- A tâtons (Virgin, 1996)
- Con Solo Pensarlo (Virgin, 1998)
- Toujours Moi (Virgin, 1999)
- Alive (Virgin, 2000)

Websites :
- My review of "Toujours Moi"
- www.axelle-red.com : the official site
- interview with Marie-Claire Belgique
- Lyrics at Waltertje's Lyrics site

Forum :
- Read the messages/questions about Axelle Red
- Add your message, question, cd- or concertreview ... about Axelle Red

 

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