West London duo Babeheaven announce debut album, Home For Now, released on 6th November 2020 via AWAL & share their new single and video, “Cassette Beat”.
Image by Joyce Ng
Babeheaven, the project of West Londoners Nancy Andersen and Jamie Travis, will release their much anticipated debut album, Home For Now, on 6th November 2020 via AWAL. In conjunction with today’s announcement the duo release a new single and video, the ethereal, “Cassette Beat”. Directed by Margot Bowman (ShyGirl, Boiler Room, Motown), the elegant video was shot on 35mm at Nancy’s grandmother's cottage in Sussex and is a meditation on Englishness and the story of Adam and Eve.
Nancy said the following about the track, which was premiered this morning by Lauren Laverne on BBC 6 Music:
“I wanted to write a song about creation. Whenever we create we subsequently end up destroying something in a huge way or a small way. But there is always light behind the dark even when you
can’t see it yet.
It’s also a comment on media, how we ingest it at an unhealthy rate - the news becomes fads instead of feeling real. I wrote this song about communication and how we consume it in so many different ways. I didn’t want it to be too negative so I wrote the chorus as a relief from the darkness of the verses.”
Growing up amongst a sense of musical history and creative atmosphere meant Babeheaven could only ever be musicians, really. Nancy Andersen and Jamie Travis’ creative partnership started out casually: from long-time best friends to working on the same street and eventually writing music together, finding a homespun touch and striking lyrical elegance which has – together with their neighbourhood – become embedded in everything they do. The connections between the pair run deep: early singles concern the passing of both of their mothers, and recall Cocteau Twins, Massive Attack or Portishead in Babeheaven’s ability to imbue heavy subject matter with a gossamer-light touch.
Their most recent EP, last year’s Suspended Animation, further explored those most raw, sometimes challenging moments of city life – everything from a party-crush to the highs and lows of modern love, through to working out the fragments of what remains.
Finding themselves unable to travel to SXSW and tour the US for the first time during lockdown in March of this year, the duo decided to finish the album. Home For Now is an album about relationships - friendships, family and romantic partners, past and present. It is dotted with everyday sounds - birds, kids talking, friends’ voices - collected over the years from various countries Jamie has visited including India, Italy and France as well as lots of course, from home in London, which all add to its sense of intimacy.
Home For Now is not constrained by styles or genres, and it cocoons you in a dreamlike state. One of the new songs, “Craziest Things”,
Nancy says,
“explores my anxiety and insomnia and not being able to make sense of my emotions”.
About the homely nature of the album Nancy elaborated:.
"I am someone who enjoys being at home and who has comfort in my belongings as I don't immediately feel comfortable in my own skin. On stage, as a plus size black woman, I have not always felt like myself or like I could express myself, it's only something I have started to take into my own hands recently.”
The record includes previous tracks “November” (from their Circles EP), “Jalisco” (from Suspended Animation) and their recent single, “Human Nature”, which earned them praise from the likes of international media as well as support from Annie Mac and Jack Saunders on BBC Radio 1, John Kennedy on Radio X and inclusion on key Spotify and Apple Music playlists.
Home For Now also features the first track ever released by the pair, "Friday Sky", which Jamie says
“feels like such an important part of our development up to this point... Our first album would not be complete without it”.
The result is Home For Now, a highly personal and homely debut album, introducing people to their world, with their arms wide open.
Babeheaven have performed at The Scala in London and sold out headline shows at Bush Hall, Jazz Cafe and Bussey Building. They have toured as special guests of Loyle Carner, Cigarettes After Sex, Nilüfer Yanya and The Japanese House, and will announce further headline live dates soon.
Babeheaven - Home For Now