Recorded in her own studio, produced by Idris Rahman, and mixed by Emre Ramazanoglu, Julia Biel’s latest studio release Black and White Vol. 1 strips back the relatively large textural palette of her self-titled 2018 album to reveal an intimate piano-vocal soundworld. Whether it’s the use of silence as a compositional device, the telling shifts from major to minor (‘Broken Little Pieces’), the use of rippling ostinatos or sudden harmonic shifts, Biel’s unique piano style is one of the album’s greatest strengths. From the incredibly poignant ‘Three Little Words’ and pleasingly cyclical ‘Shhh…’ to the almost painterly ‘The Wilderness’, once you step inside Biel’s musical sphere, with that remarkable voice at its centre, you can’t help but become completely immersed in it. It’s the singular way in which she inhabits the mood of each song that inexorably draws you in. In addition to a brace of dreamlike interludes, ‘A Room With A View’ and ‘Onwards’ – beautiful miniatures both – there are lyrical jewels scattered throughout, not least in ‘Licence To Be Cruel’ (“But to love you is a battle/A shoot-out in the Wild West/Guaranteed bloodshed for a fool”).