Bas Jan are a London-based experimental post-punk trio built around the remarkable and distinctive voice and songs of multi-instrumentalist and composer Serafina Steer. Their utterly brilliant debut album Yes I Jan will be released via Lost Map Records digitally on February 9, 2018, and on vinyl from February 23rd 2018.
Who is Serafina Steer? She's a vocalist, harpist, bassist and keyboard player who has released three critically-acclaimed solo albums under her own name – the latest of which, 2013’s The Moths Are Real was produced by Jarvis Cocker – as well as appeared both live and on record with musicians including Lone Taxidermist, Jon Hopkins, Rozi Plain, John T. Gast, Patrick Wolf, Tunng and John Foxx. She sees her practice as much as a social activity as an expressive, technical art and takes an experimental, punk approach to music making - seeking to create work that has a free quality and resists categorisation, often arising through the juxtaposition of musical disciplines and genres.
Named after the Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who was last seen setting out to sail across the Atlantic in 1975, Bas Jan’s earliest songs were initially conceived as Serafina Steer solo material, until Bas Jan co-founder members Sarah Anderson and Jenny Moore triangulated the whole collaboration and, in 2015, the band was born. Since recording Yes I Jan, both Sarah and Jenny have moved on to other projects, and currently joining Steer in the new incarnation of Bas Jan are violinist, bassist and vocalist Emma Smith (Meilyr Jones, Seamus Fogarty and founder member of the Elysian Quartet) and drummer and vocalist Rachel Horwood (Trash Kit, Bamboo).
Bas Jan’s self-titled five track debut EP was self-released in 2017, and was championed by BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley. Since then, they have performed at festivals including BFI, Serpentine Summer Pavilion, Green Man, End of the Road and Supernormal, as well as sessions for BBC 6 Music Live and Radio 3.
