Jams of the Week: Shallou, Lion Babe, Pan Amsterdam, Anaïs, Trampolene

This week, take flight with Shal­lou, ride the mid­night wave with Lion Babe, chill with Pan Ams­ter­dam, feel Anaïs’s soul­ful flow, and wake up with Tram­po­lene.

*** Lis­ten to even more new music on The Fresh List playlist ***

‘Vignette’ by Shallou

Wash­ing­ton DC-based beat­mak­er Shal­lou is help­ing us get clear of the smog, crowds and noise of urban life with his ethe­re­al blends. ‘Vignette’ is the lat­est sin­gle from his forth­com­ing EP, Souls (due April 27), and it has that weight­less, com­fort­ing aura of a Bonobo or Four Tet track. The video, direct­ed by Jor­dan Tay­lor Wright, is a feast for the eyes, too.

‘The Wave (feat. Leikeli47)’ by Lion Babe

We’re in love with Lion Babe and the alter­nate present they inhab­it, where 1970s dis­co has col­lid­ed with woozy, 2010s elec­tron­i­ca. ‘The Wave’, the lat­est sin­gle from singer Jil­lian Her­vey and pro­duc­er Lucas Good­man, is anoth­er super-slick dance-pop groove and fea­tures rap­per Leikeli47. Along with recent sin­gle ‘Hon­ey Dew’ and 2017’s ‘Rock­ets’, Lion Babe are rack­ing up tunes to sound­track chic, rooftop par­ties from New York to Nairo­bi. The duo have a new project on the way, and we can’t wait to hear what’s next from them.

‘Plus One’ by Pan Amsterdam

There’s a mat­ter-of-fact­ness about Pan Ams­ter­dam that’s instant­ly like­able. He spouts his bars with casu­al con­fi­dence, as if he’s chill­ing on the street cor­ner, rhyming at you, like MF Doom or Skimkid3 (The Phar­cyde). Backed by its mel­low jazz loops, this jam is sun-baked East Coast gold.

‘Set in Stone’ by Anaïs

What makes Anaïs’s music so allur­ing isn’t her deft vocal abil­i­ties, which are part Des’ree, part Nao. It’s not her sub­lime vers­es, which are filmic, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal. And it’s not the sol­id-sound­ing instru­men­ta­tion that backs her up her sto­ries. It’s all three of these things combined.

‘Set in Stone’ appears on her debut EP, Before Zero, and is a tale of change. Anaïs’s own sto­ry is an inter­est­ing one: she stud­ied at NYU, along with con­tem­po­raries Arca and Gal­lant. In 2015, she moved to Lon­don, where she’s been build­ing con­tacts and work­ing on her craft. Her debut EP – which also fea­tures her trib­ute to Nina Simone and a cov­er of Charles Aznavour’s ‘La Mam­ma’ – con­firms her as a tal­ent fans of soul­ful pop should absolute­ly follow.

‘Hard Times for Dreamers’ by Trampolene

“It’s not a rev­o­lu­tion, it’s a rev­e­la­tion,” shouts lead singer Jack Jones. Swansea rock group Tram­po­lene know what’s going on. Chan­nelling the wry gab of Oasis and the may­hem of Nir­vana, their lat­est sin­gle is a rau­cous scream at the pas­sive, apa­thet­ic shoul­der-shrug­ging of the world today. Give their debut album, Swansea to Hornsey, a lis­ten, if their punky, indie rock gets your blood pumping.

*** Lis­ten to even more new music on The Fresh List playlist ***

Image: Julia Lowe