London-based ensemble Bas Jan return with a new expanded line-up, and news of their much-anticipated second album. 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). 

Bas Jan were co-founded in 2015 by songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Serafina Steer. 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 marks a consolidation of Bas Jan as a four piece,” says Serafina. “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. 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. 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. It’s kind of a pragmatically hopeful record.”