J. BERNARDT

While Jinte Deprez was preparing the second solo album of his alter ego J. Bernardt, “I suddenly had an image of what it could be,” he recounts.
Deprez/Bernardt’s album, Contigo – Spanish for “with you” – is as dramatic, fascinating and colorful as the image he described to his producer. It’s steeped in drama and driven by the sumptuous melodies, vocals and production of a master studio auteur, musical inventor and singer. Contigo explores all the phases of a break-up: shock, sadness, anger, denial, hurt, acceptance… and is “viciously romantic” in the process. “I know a breakup record is a cliché,” says Deprez.

Deprez is best known as one of the co-leaders of Balthazar, one of Belgium’s best-loved and most respected alternative rock bands.
Balthazar, one of Belgium’s best-loved and most respected alternative rock bands for over twenty years. Left to their own devices, Contigo focus and expand both their sound and their vision. The album moves between sophistication and freedom, emphasis and subtlety, steel and warmth, drawing on pop, white soul, funk, spaghetti western soundtracks and orchestration with a kind of synthesizing spirit.