The road to Nakhane’s third studio album, ‘Bastard Jargon’ was sweaty; the artist was dishing out dance bangers, which are the direct opposite of the mood of his previous album, ‘You Will Not Die’.
Given the trauma the album drew on, Nakhane says, ‘You Will Not Die’ wasn’t exactly a party album – a fact underlined when the time came to play festivals. As an an emerging artist, Nakhane was playing the 2pm slot, just as the crowd were warming up with a few beers, “the sun is blaring on us and I’m singing these sad songs to people who just want to dance and I thought ‘I can’t keep crying for people. I want to write an album that has movement in it, you know?’”
The result is ‘Bastard Jargon’, an album filled with upbeat music where Nakhane hits you with thoughtful lyrics over pulsating beats that draw from vintage pop and modern electric music.
Written over 18 months in Lisbon, Ghent, Oxfordshire, London and Hastings, “It’s an existential sex album,” says the artist. “Almost every song on it has some kind of wink towards sex. It’s not necessarily a seductive, come to me, bedroom eyes kind of sex – it’s much more inquisitive, psychological sex. When I wrote ‘You Will Not Die’ it was at the end of my relationship with Christianity, and then when I wrote Bastard Jargon I’d moved to London and I threw myself into just wanting to feel good.”
To realise this lustful vision, Nakhane recruited Nile Rodgers as executive producer, having first met the Chic legend at the BBC doing Later With Jools Holland.
Rodgers plays on the second track (and co-produced 5 others), ‘Tell Me Your Politik’, which features Moonchild Sanelly. In the song, he states that he finds it important that him and his prospective lovers are ideologically aligned.
Nakhane, who’s currently based in the UK, last released a full-length album, ‘You Will Not Die’, in 2018, which was a follow-up to his debut album ‘Brave Confusion’, released in 2013.
Stream ‘Bastard Jargon’ below:
