Hometown: North London.
The lineup: Yehan Jehan (music, instruments)
The background: What if Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker was an all-writing, singing, playing and producing synth kid from Sarajevo not Sydney? What if a suddenly impoverished George Michael came back and decided to eschew expensive studios and instead make a record using affordable technology – a MacBook Pro here, a bit of Logic there, with some Universal Apollo Interface thrown in for that budget-luxe effect? The results might well sound like the debut album by Yehan Jehan, a 23-year-old do-it-all (and we do mean “all”, up to and including the mixing and the artwork) type from north London via Bosnia, the home country of his piano teacher mother and film score composer father.
As yet untitled (Jehan is with Big Life management, who look after Bloc Party and Badly Drawn Boy, but is still waiting to sign with a label), it’s destined to be one of the albums of the year; the backdrop to your summer (presuming he gets the deal in time) and beyond. With his light, soft voice effortlessly soaring over lushly arranged songs about heartache and modern-age anxiety, it captures a young man on the cusp of agonising maturity, attempting to communicate his feelings to the world, notwithstanding his economic strictures. “I used to have more gear but I had to sell it off to make money,” he tells New Band of the Week. He’s managed to conceal his relative poverty, achieving an expansive, sophisticated sound. To Jehan, the production is as important as the song. His sonic role models include TI’s Parker, Quincy Jones, the inevitable Prince, and “anyone who writes, produces and arranges everything themselves”. He says: “My whole thing about making music is to have the biggest sound anyone can get from a bedroom. I always aim for a studio-like quality. It shouldn’t sound DIY, it should be a very full-bodied, colourful sound.” He’s outgrown his indie phase; now his ambitions know no bounds. “I was lo-fi at 14,” he laughs, recalling that he began recording his own material at that age after initially emulating Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. “Now, though, there’s a certain standard I’m aiming for. I’m taking all my favourite things from the past, on a very small setup, and pushing it as far as I can.”
On the album you can hear that Jehan has spent his young life listening to 80s disco and pop-funk, while guilty-pleasure balladry is reclaimed and made lavish and swish. Jehan has absorbed everything, cool and cheesy, and given it a stylish makeover. There is an intriguing disconnect between the shiny surfaces and pleasingly soft melodies and the themes explored in the lyrics. Songs range from “the fictional and dreamlike” to more personal ones “related to love, heartbreak and mind games” while others address global unease. Phantom’s Beat is a veiled critique of “the moribund music scene”. Eat Me Alive concerns urban disquiet. Freaking Out is “about feeling trapped in your body and not being able to get out”. Our Day Will Come was written in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks.
However “heavy” the words, the music is never less than poppy, breezy, funk-inflected and light. While Jehan says things such as “I’ve always been attracted to space and beyond the vortex”, and is into meditation, spirituality and “the detachment of ego”, there is nothing arcane or inaccessible about the songs. Yes, there’s a track called Ra “about energy and the power of the sun”. And opening number Swallow the Horizon is “a celebration of sun goddesses and all things female” (although possibly not the home secretary and junior energy minister). But you’d never know. It just sounds like slick, accomplished 80s pop disco, beautifully played and produced. Future Ringtone is a future hit. Freaking Out is gorgeous 90s house-pop reminiscent of Saint Etienne offshoot Cola Boy’s Seven Ways to Love. Tired One/Light Speed is heady, giddy, like being drunk on “lovely”, all spangly guitars and radiant synths. Eat Me Alive could have been on a version of Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall remade by a Bosnian Londoner with a fetish for the forlorn.
Throughout, Jehan gives good swirl: Ra is positively celestial, with a seraphic, euphoric chorus. The Movements and Ripples Between Me & You shows off his more gentle, acoustic side: this album is both party music and comedown soundtrack. “Consciousness is moving and expanding and we have to expand with it,” decides Jehan, not so hard-up that he can’t afford to luxuriate in his own potential. “A bunch of things are happening that are the good things from the past fusing with today and tomorrow. So I think it’s going to be alright.”
The truth: It’s a synth-sational pop-funk album of the year.
Most likely to: Swallow the horizon.
Least likely to: Freak out.
What to buy: Swallow the Horizon is available now on Spotify. The album will be released later this year.
File next to: Toro y Moi, Private, Tame Impala, PM Dawn.
Links: facebook.com/yehanjehan.
Ones to watch: Pillow Person, Black Dylan, Bossy Love, Faulkner, Ängie.
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