Julia Biel is one of the jewels of the UK music scene – a one-time member of the innovative F-IRE Collective, guest vocalist with the likes of Ben Watt (legendary musician/producer behind Everything But the Girl) and with left-field post-jazz experimentalists Polar Bear, she is also one of the lead vocalists with feted afrobeat/reggae/dub outfit Soothsayers. Meanwhile, her own music has been described as being like Massive Attack with a jazz twist, and seen her vocally compared to the likes of Bjork, Billie Holiday, Rickie Lee Jones, Alison Goldfrapp and Thom Yorke.

A former winner of the Perrier Jazz Vocalist of the Year award, the first album out under her name, Not Alone, received extravagant critical praise and led to extensive UK-wide touring, a featured appearance in a Nokia ad campaign and a BBC Jazz Award nomination in the ‘Rising Star’ category.

A self-produced album largely featuring Julia's co-written material with folk-jazz guitarist Jonny Phillips, Not Alone was a bewitching confection of cool ballads, folk songs and even a little laid-back rootsy hip hop. Now, Biel is putting the finishing touches to her debut self-penned record, this time sharing production duties with Idris Rahman (Soothsayers). With album samplers that nod to Radiohead, PJ Harvey, Portishead and Bjork as much as to Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, the forthcoming album promises to be chock full of melancholic innocence and epic drama, all wrapped up in a production style that owes as much to the contemporary as to the classic.