For a good two years after the release of her last album "My One and Only Thrill", Melody Gardot toured the world, rushing from continent to continent and from gig to gig. You would think that she would have had enough of traveling after that. But no, Melody remained restless and was keen for a change. She continued to travel on her own to get to know people and other cultures. She roamed the deserts of Morocco and the streets of Lisbon, visited the tango bars of Buenos Aires and the beaches of Brazil, and tried to capture some of the essence of all these exotic places for "The Absence" without giving up her very own musical identity. In the summer of 2010, Melody took a last-minute trip to Marrakech. During an overnight stay in the desert, she had a kind of epiphany, as she says: "There are so many languages and so many cultures," she reports, "but it's always amazing how similar the music of the whole world is in spirit." Melody's next stopover was in Lisbon. She set up home with her piano in a weathered palazzo in the old town center of Alfama and tried to get to the bottom of the so-called saudade, that indefinable, thoroughly Portuguese sentiment of loss and longing. Songs such as "Lisboa" convey an impression of her stay in the Portuguese capital and of the musical sounds she picked up in the narrow alleyways: children playing, church bells, singers on street corners. She learned the language, wandered through fado clubs and immersed herself in writing songs. From Lisbon, she moved on to Buenos Aires. As a passionate tango dancer, she was naturally drawn to the historic San Telmo district, where the streets are literally filled with the sound of tango music. Inspired by the dramatic rhythms and spirit of the tango, she wrote pieces such as "Goodbye" and the brooding "So We Meet Again, My Heartache". The exotic street culture of Buenos Aires provided a backdrop for her to delve even deeper into the saudade feeling. Finally, Melody was ready to venture out into the sun and explore the music of Brazil. She chartered a sailboat and asked the skipper to head north. They sailed along the Brazilian coast for a whole month. It was exactly what Melody needed to unwind. The rich colors of the landscape, the smiles of the people and the passion of samba pulled Melody out of the depths of longing and sadness. Songs like "Mira" and "Yemanjá" were written there. "Many of the stories I tell on this album are based on my own experiences," says Melody Gardot, "but also on observations I made when I lived with all these foreign people. I saw them suddenly overcome with sadness or joy at the most inconspicuous moments, and a common bond formed between us." "When you experience love in a different way, when you understand what love means in a community, then you realize what really connects people," philosophizes the American songwriter. "It changes a lot of things for me: it brought me close to people - especially in Brazil - who use music to celebrate." With all these experiences and musical impressions in her luggage, Melody returned to the USA, where she immediately contacted the producer, composer and guitarist Heitor Pereira. "It was a wonderful encounter," Melody recalls of her meeting with Pereira. "I had reached a point where I didn't know what to do next. Somehow, over the months I'd been traveling, all this music had bubbled up inside me but hadn't found a way out yet. I needed a partner and collaborator with their own genius traits. I needed someone crazy enough to understand how serious I was when I said a sentence like 'I want to play palm leaves and washboard'. What's more, he also had to make sure that I got what I wanted." Brazilian-born Heitor Teixeira Pereira (a.k.a. Heitor TP), who now lives in the USA, proved to be the perfect partner. He was guitarist for the band Simply Red from 1988 to 1996 and accompanied pop greats such as Sting, Elton John, Rod Stewart, k.d. lang, Seal, Caetano Veloso and Jack Johnson, before making an outstanding name for himself as a film composer and musician (including "Madagascar", "Mission: Impossible II" and "The Smurfs"). Like Melody Gardot, he has a penchant for moving off the beaten track musically and cavorting in the no-man's land between western pop music, jazz, blues and soul. And when it comes to trying out sonic ideas, he is just as adventurous as Melody herself. The two worked together on songs such as "Se você me ama" ("If you love me") and "Amália". Heitor plays guitar, of course, and can also be heard as a singer in "Se você me ama". He also wrote the orchestral arrangements. The core band was completed by bassist John Leftwich, percussionist Paulinho da Costa and drummers Jim Keltner and Peter Erskine. After being unavailable for a long time, the 2012 LP is now finally being reissued.