{"title":"Jabu","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJabu is a talented artist known for their unique blend of experimental electronic music and soulful vocals. With influences ranging from hip-hop to ambient, Jabu's sound is both captivating and introspective. Their music has been compared to artists such as Young Echo, O$VMV$M, and CS + Kreme.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKnown for their collaborations with other artists in the underground music scene, Jabu has worked with performers like Jonnine, Space Afrika, and RAMZi. Their ability to seamlessly merge different genres and styles sets them apart from other musicians in the industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith a discography that includes releases on labels like HTRK Records and Purelink Music, Jabu continues to push boundaries and explore new sonic territories. Whether performing live or producing in the studio, their passion for creating innovative music shines through in every project they undertake.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"boiling-wells-demos-10-22","title":"Boiling Wells (Demos 19  22)","description":"\u003cp\u003eTrue as it is, Jabu’s strap-line is a somewhat understated take on what also proved to be a transformative experience for them. The follow-up record to their 2020 sophomore LP ‘Sweet Company’ (and the ensuing ‘Versions’), ‘Boiling Wells’ weaves a smudged, group -mind spell. Originally 9 released earlier this year without fanfare as a digital-only release, it now receives the proper release attention it deserves, issued in a neatly packaged vinyl edition of 300 copies. Dreamlike, woozy, raw and in dub, the album documents a blossoming process, and encapsulates a fragment in time - holed up in the country, soaking up the atmosphere in collective isolation, creatively embracing the limitations of a small recording set-up, and finding a new way to work as a band. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e There has always been a collaborative heart to Jabu, though its nature has shifted and morphed over time. In their earliest incarnation, in after-school jams, Alex Rendall would rap over Amos Childs’ beats, but by the time they began releasing music in 2012, Al had found his singing voice – a sweet, soulful counterpoint to Amos’ increasingly dub-wise, experimental backing. Both are founder members of Bristol’s Young Echo, a collective of friends and musicians first operating loosely together on radio shows, artistic collaborations and events, and later on, running a record label. For ‘Boiling Wells’, Amos remembers a diet of “A.R. Kane, Cocteau Twins, DJ Screw, Southern\/Memphis rap mixtapes, early 90’s jungle, Karen Dalton, Sybille Baier, Vashti Bunyan, Svitlana Nianio, a lot of soul, Armand Hammer \u0026amp; Alchemist, Grouper, Bobby Caldwell. Jazz was a constant, Japanese, Polish, Latin, American…”. And from those diverse strands, something new and singular has formed, to line up alongside them.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Six of Swords","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50434837676363,"sku":"2056800","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Jabu_-_Boiling_Wells_4315c949_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726895673"},{"product_id":"sleep-heavy","title":"Sleep Heavy","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlackest Ever Black presents \u003ci\u003eSleep Heavy\u003c\/i\u003e, the debut album of broken-hearted, downtempo R\u0026amp;B \/ street-soul and supremely atmospheric, introspective electronics from Jabu: a trio comprised of vocalist \/ lyricists Alex Rendall and Jasmine Butt, and producer Amos Childs. The group was born out of Bristol’s Young Echo collective: an ecosystem unto itself which has birthed and nurtured a number of other notable soundsystem-rooted projects and artists to date including Kahn and Neek, Sam Kidel, Ishan Sound, Ossia, Asda, chester giles (the title \u003ci\u003eSleep Heavy\u003c\/i\u003e comes from a giles poem) and Killing Sound (Childs with Kidel and Vessel).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blackest Ever Black","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50496155550027,"sku":"1015109","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50496156107083,"sku":"1015108","price":6.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/d1f56bb6-6c26-4d76-a440-58469d1adfcb_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727717583"},{"product_id":"sweet-company","title":"Sweet Company","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSweet Company\u003c\/i\u003e is the second album by Jabu. Where their first LP \u003ci\u003eSleep Heavy\u003c\/i\u003e was an unflinching exploration of grief, dark and disembodied, \u003ci\u003eSweet Company\u003c\/i\u003e’s deep, sedative soul feels like more of a lovers’ outing: optimistic, becalmed, looking outwards as well as inwards, and longing for the kind of human connections where ego and self-consciousness might dissolve. It is perhaps also an exhortation to love and accept yourself, to recover a lost innocence and peace – that paradise which has always been lost. Released via their own do you have peace? label, \u003ci\u003eSweet Company\u003c\/i\u003e is on the one hand a very intimate and private-sounding work - the sound of life played out in a room, a bubble, a home, a head. The rhythms of everyday domesticity: listening to the plants, cars in the street, voices through the wall…. going to work, not going to work, sleeping heavy or not sleeping at all.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Do You Have Peace?","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50499125117259,"sku":"1108717","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/fb70be12-a4a5-4df7-8d6d-9c394c0dd33d_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727768529"},{"product_id":"sweet-company-1","title":"Sweet Company","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSweet Company\u003c\/i\u003e is the second album by Jabu. Where their first LP, Sleep Heavy, was an unflinching exploration of grief, dark and disembodied, \u003ci\u003eSweet Company’s\u003c\/i\u003e deep, sedative soul feels like more of a lovers’ outing: optimistic, becalmed, looking outwards as well as inwards, and longing for the kind of human connections where ego and self-consciousness might dissolve. It is perhaps also an exhortation to love and accept yourself, to recover a lost innocence and peace – that paradise which has always been lost.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eReleased via their own Do you Have Peace? label,\u003ci\u003e Sweet Company\u003c\/i\u003e is on the one hand a very intimate and private-sounding work - the sound of life played out in a room, a bubble, a home, a head. The rhythms of everyday domesticity: listening to the plants, cars in the street, voices through the wall…. going to work, not going to work, sleeping heavy or not sleeping at all. Wavering on the brink of a revelation, of something just beyond the material world, while you wait for the kettle to boil.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe core Jabu trio of producer Amos Childs and vocalists Jasmine Butt and Alex Rendall is present and correct. \u003ci\u003eSweet Company\u003c\/i\u003e has the exhilarating sweep and confidence of a collaboration between people who trust and understand each other implicitly, and, secure in that knowledge, are able to give the absolute best of themselves to us. As before, Jasmine’s voice is a textural, painterly instrument, layered and blurred into abstraction, resisting the limits of language; the songs she sings on are portals into vast internal landscapes where the normal rules of gravity are suspended, every sound is smothered in a cathedral-like resonance, and you're both fearful and hopeful that you might never find your way back out again. Alex takes a more narrative, confessional and no less engaging pop tack: as on the gauzy, decelerated 2-step of\u003ci\u003e Lately\u003c\/i\u003e, with his masochistic, self-mocking entreaties to “be cruel to me […] I like it when you make a fool of me”.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChilds has a true hip-hop fiend's ear for a striking sample, and how to loop it to most hypnotic and rapturous effect, but here takes things to ever more powerfully uncanny and auteurish places, drawing inspiration from the voidal bliss-outs of shoegaze (AR Kane’s amniotic dream-pop epic 69 is one influence cited) and the space-time disturbances of dub, commanding both a raindrops-on-cobwebs delicacy and an immense, oceanic pressure. His productions seem to resist linear progression - instead they move by a kind of unstoppable diffusion, like weeds reclaiming an unkempt garden, or alien flora patterning the sea-floor and coral-caves of the subaquatic level of a computer game which may exist only in your, or his, imagination.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePerhaps it's Daniela Dyson, the British-Afro-Colombian artist who contributes her vivid, energising poetic mysticism to two tracks, who best sums up Sweet Company's ambition and effect: “Me quiero perder en los momentos tan puros en su esencia que Las Horas mismas se detienen para ser testigo de nuestro amor” (I want to lose myself in the moments so pure in their essence \/ that The Hours themselves stop to bear witness to our love…). For a precious half an hour, we're invited to celebrate the smallness of our lives - and the limitless grandeur which that smallness contains. When it ends, we step back from the brink but things aren’t quite the same anymore: we’re haunted by what we briefly almost knew.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Do You Have Peace?","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50512826925387,"sku":"1103779","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/6a5df96f-6d02-45fe-87ff-9e71984ac7f2_thumbnail_4096.png?v=1727907892"},{"product_id":"a-soft-and-gatherable-star","title":"A Soft and Gatherable Star","description":"\u003cp\u003eJabu return with ‘A Soft and Gatherable Star’, an LP that sees the Bristol-based trio evolve from a uniquely spectral take on hip hop to proffer a singular vision between cloudy, downered dream-pop, off-kilter ambient, and the warm, low-end throb of sound system culture. This development is aligned with contemporaries like HTRK, Dean Blunt, Tarquin Manek, YL Hooi and Rat Heart Ensemble, whilst also harkening back to the likes of AR Kane (with whom they are set to play shows and release a collaborative single), the languorous drift of 'Victorialand' era Cocteau Twins or The Cure circa ‘Disintegration’. Comprising Jasmine Butt (vocals, guitar), Alex Rendall (vocals, keys) and Amos Childs (production, bass guitar), the trio’s method may have shifted but the feel remains consistent - slow, spatial, sensuous and gently melancholic. With a career arc unlike almost any other current guitar outfit, Jabu sit within a strong lineage of off-centre Bristolian music, and a very British strain of home-spun DIY bands. Self-recorded between Jas and Amos’ home in South Bristol and Amos’ mum’s house in rural North Somerset, the album came together via a process of trial and error - learning to play on borrowed instruments, using the equipment “wrong”, staying up late recording and slipping into strange, semi-conscious sleep deprived\/inebriated headspaces. Having captured over 50 tracks, they honed in on those they liked most, shaping them further, whilst carving out space to allow input from people they love and admire - Daniela Dyson’s voice and Will Memotone's clarinet on ‘Ashes Over Shute Shelve’, Birthmark's synth on ‘Gently Fade’ and ‘Sea Mills’, Rakhi Singh (Manchester Collective) and Sebastian Gainsborough (Vessel)’s strings and arrangements on ‘All Night’, Josh Horsley’s cello on ‘If I Asked You, You'd Tell Me’, and Lorenzo Prati’s sax, again on ‘Sea Mills’. The album was mastered by Amir Shoat (HTRK, ML Buch, Dean Blunt, Carla Dal Forno). Influencewise, the guitar-based material recalls the bands Amos listened to when younger, and Jas’ more folk-leaning inspirations. Deep-lying dub, hip hop and soul influences are also evident in both the way the LP was mixed, and the space ingrained in their subconscious. Tinged with melancholy, the songs cohere as a set of soliloquies and ruminations on love and tenderness. The album’s title comes from a poem by Amos’ late father which hangs on his wall and seeped into the record. ‘Ashes Over Shute Shelve’ is formed of lines from another poem of his. Recited by longtime collaborator Daniela Dyson and with Will Yates (Memotone) playing his mother’s clarinet, the track was imagined as a conversation between his parents. Geography and location also play a big part in the record, with several significant places name-checked in songs. Shute Shelve itself is a hill near Amos’ mum’s house, who explains “There’s a tree at the top with a 360° view of the Mendips, where my dad’s ashes were scattered. We used to go up there when we could first buy booze from the petrol station down the road, get drunk, light a fire, listen to music from my little battery powered CD player and sleep out without tents.” Titled after a Bristol suburb near where Amos’ grandparents lived and where Jas would spend time as a teenager, ‘Sea Mills’ references her being abandoned by friends on the Downs while high on mushrooms, stranded and missing the bus back. ‘Kosiše Flower’ references the city in Slovakia where Amos and Jas holidayed shortly after getting together and a flower he gave her, which she pressed in a book after an argument. ‘Oceanside Spider House’ is a location in Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, where someone seeks shelter from the falling moon.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Do You Have Peace?","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50532258644299,"sku":"2221022","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Jabu__A_Soft_and_Gatherable_Star_ec1e3d3a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728117931"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_d0a869cf_thumbnail_4096_105ff837-2e19-4f97-9760-fc02e7a3ef91.jpg?v=1726895654","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/jabu.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}