Lion Babe are an act that seemed to appear overnight, yet had everyone talking. Born in New York, as the lovechild of singer/songwriter and performance artist Jillian Hervey, and instrumentalist and producer Lucas Goodman, they mix a spectrum of sounds, and stunning visuals, influenced by the likes of A Tribe Called Quest and Sergeant Pepper-era Beatles. With a fresh new music video for ‘Impossible‘ released today, an album later this year and a headline show at Heaven on November 24th, we sat down with the electric duo to find out more! 

Who/what are your main influences?

Jilian: Musically I think we both have an eclectic taste.  We’re both influenced by soul music and a lot of the stuff going on in the late 50s to 70s era. One of my favourite artists and performers is Josephine Baker. Our influences are always changing but there is definitely a strong influence from that era. Also, I use Tumblr loads so a lot of times that has introduced me to people that I look at as inspiring. Whether that’s based on their style or the quotes they have.

How do you incorporate these influences into your own music?

Lucas: We are just listening to loads of records and taking elements – like “oh I like that guitar” etc. We’ll either just do an actual sample or maybe listen to those records the day before we go to the studio and it usually just comes out. But, always with a new twist to it. Whether it’s something more futuristic, an electronic thing, or you know, just doing it a little differently than they probably would have back then.

How important are visuals to you?

Lucas: It is really important. It is the other half to our whole. For us, it has always been multimedia, in the sense that we want there to be two sides – whether that is in our videos or our shows.

Jilian: I come from a performance background [as the daughter of Vanessa Williams] and performance art was what I was doing before I met Lucas. I could never be just singing as I think visually. When we are writing songs, for me, it happens in unison. That’s my way of bringing to our world what I have been trained to do my whole life.

Lucas, before Lion Babe you were producing music as Astro Raw. How is the writing process now you work as part of a duo?

Lucas: I love it. It is so nice to have collaboration. When you are making beats by yourself it is totally cool because you’ve got your own vibe, but, as a duo we can turn it into something more than a beat and transform it into a song. Jilian is a naturally awesome song writer. The first time we ever really worked on something together it felt really good. When two brains are working on something twice as much happens. Sometimes we collaborate with another artist or producer and it’s amazing because three times as much is happening. It’s just more fun than being by yourself all the time [laughs].

At the moment you are touring around the UK – how has that been?

Jilian: Last night we played in Manchester, at the Ruby Lounge, and it was a lot of fun because the crowd were so into it. It was so funny because people seemed to know the lyrics to new songs, and I have no idea how they know but they just know! [laughs] Maybe we have spies in the studio!

You are both from New York, what would you say were the main differences between the American and British music scenes?

Jilian: There is definitely a difference in the pacing of things. Things move faster here. The fact that Lion Babe is being played on the radio in the UK now is pretty exciting. When we first started we never thought our songs were going to be played on the radio. It is pretty cool to know that a country is embracing your sound and helping people discover you.

Lion Babe has been collaborating with some big names (Pharrell, Mark Ronson etc.) who have strong recognisable styles. Did you ever worry that your own developing sound would be overlooked?

Lucas: Not really because the process of how these records were made involved so much conversation between us and them. With Pharrell we had a two day writing session with him in Miami. It was so surreal and exciting, especially for it to happen so early on for Lion Babe. He would be like ‘put together a riff and I’ll be back in two hours’. Then he’d come back and we would work out a rough song which we would then take back to New York add other elements to. It is a mix of flavours- you can hear Pharrell, but in the end it is definitely Lion Babe.

What is your FAULT?

Jilian: I hate to admit this, but I am not the best at time management. Marilyn Monroe was also a Gemini and she had the same issue!

Lucas:
Just management in general (laughs)

The new single ‘Impossible’ out August 28th in the UK, preorder now http://po.st/WWiTYT . Out now ex UK. Listen to LION BABE on Spotify http://po.st/LBEPSpotify

 

 

Words  HENRIETTA SCRINE

Photography DANIEL SACHON

Fashion Editor RACHEL HOLLAND

Hair BIANCA SIMONE SCOTT

Make Up NICKY WEIR @ SARAH LAIRD USING BOBBI BROWN

NAILS KIONE GRANDISON

Fashion Assistant BELDA CHUNG