The Patricia Kaas new album, officially still not sold in the world, distributed through L'Etoile Russia. This is a russian version with a bonus track performed in russian.

I called the album Heavy Rotation because it's a phrase that originated with DJs, and also for me the meaning is, life can be heavy, but it all turns around and goes into something else. It seemed to be the perfect title for where I'm at in my life.

Anastacia

In the middle of the 1990s the album Black Coffee was produced, an enigma in Kaas' career. In 1995 it was decided to produce a work specially for the American market containing exclusively English lyrics. Rumours state that the album was never officially sold. It occasionally becomes available in online auctions, however, but the authenticity of these records is in doubt.

This time out, the French diva's husky voice sounds far more lived-in, mature, passionate, and vehement than ever before. It's safe to say that her previous albums only gave an inkling of her true capabilities. Yes, the arrangements are frequently overblown and bombastic; that hasn't changed but somehow it doesn't matter because this singer has finally come into her own. Like her glamorous predecessors, Damia and Edith Piaf (the context may be different but the baton has been claimed), she has an uncanny ability to flatten the listener with vulnerability, to attract by going too far, to make sophistication appear naive and born of the moment. Perhaps this is part of her native culture's flair for rendering artifice so seductive that it becomes an end in itself, but it's also true that few cabaret traditions can approach how the French describe the raw, heedless depths of sexual obsession.

–Christina Roden

Patricia Kaas is proud of her stance as a unique chanteuse, and her individuality is clearly highlighted on this CD, recorded in Paris and London with an impressive selection of first-rate musicians. She demonstrates her musicality in unusually vigorous and varied interpretations. Not afraid to challenge her audiences, Kaas dares to mix genres as different as a piano quartet and a bal musette accordion on the same disc. She can, on "JoJo," sound like the reincarnation of Edith Piaf, but she also succeeds in putting her own personal stamp on such Piaf classics as "La Vie en Rose." On this disc, she essays two songs in English, but her distinctive charm is revealed more clearly in her breathless rendition of "Reste Sur Moi."

Ed Killham