I was in shock because he was also hitting every note spot on.”ĥ. Dennis MacKay, engineer on Ziggy: “Bowie’s screaming and what you hear on that song, the emotion is for real. Five repeats in all, the rest of the song, which ends in screams, then fades away. The verses of “Five Years” seem like they will never end, until, after curling into a ball, they become a doomsday pub singalong refrain. Ronson’s electric guitar only appears on the refrain’s fourth go-round (cued by a “what a surprise!”). Bowie on 12-string acoustic guitar (“a girl my age”) shadowed by Mick Ronson-arranged strings (“went off her head”). Trevor Bolder on bass, making interjections between lines (e.g., the octave jump after the news guy tells us the bad news). Double-tracked autoharp and piano (ZING! “pushing through the market square”). It’s an acting troupe sketch, with scenario by Liverpudlian poet Roger McGough, place setting of the Market Square, Aylesbury, location of the Friars Club (we’re pushing through, not pushing ahead), and various mimes (“queer” vomiting, soldier with broken arm, cop kneeling to priest, girl drinking milkshake).Ĥ. “Five Years,” one of Bowie’s last Sixties songs, could have been sung at his Arts Lab in Beckenham–you can imagine his folk trio Feathers doing it. You become accepted and the impact has gone. That’s what’s missing in pop music now-entertainment….You can’t remain at the top for five years and still be outrageous. This is going to be something new…no one has ever seen anything like this before….it’s going to be entertainment. Woodmansey later describes it as putting “hopelessness into a drumbeat.”Ģ. The first sound that you hear, creeping in via Ken Scott’s faders, is Woody Woodmansey’s kick drum and closed hi-hat, in 3/4 time, with a snare hit (flutter) on the third beat, then (wham!) on the downbeat. It’s kind of a pragmatically hopeful record.1. The time constraints of having to finish the record before one of the band entered third trimester of pregnancy, and with a winter lockdown pending, probably added a rawness to these recordings. Getting the Arts Council Funding and making the album represented a coming together out of the solitudes of 2020, carving out the possibility of a future for the band at a time when Brexit and Everything cast all those things very much into doubt or, at best, made them a very low priority. “It was recorded at Cafe OTO in London over three days and then finished with Capitol K at the Total Refreshment Centre in London in September 2020. “Baby U Know marks a consolidation of Bas Jan as a four piece,” says Serafina. The band features Emma Smith (Jarv Is, Meilyr Jones, Seamus Fogarty and founder member of the Elysian Quartet) on violin, bass and electronics, Rachel Horwood (Trash Kit, Bamboo, Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business) on drums and Charlie Stock on electric violin.
Baby U Know is due for release on January 28, 2022, and is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2018 debut album Yes I Jan, which was hailed for its “messy majesty” (9/10, Uncut) and “beautifully fractured art-pop” (★★★★, Mojo).īas Jan were co-founded in 2015 by songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Serafina Steer. London-based ensemble Bas Jan return with a new expanded line-up, and news of their much-anticipated second album.
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