Jamie Woon will make you swoon

Jo Whiley lowered the curtain on her 18-year tenure on Radio 1 this weekend with a few sniffles, a visit from Dave Grohl and a special song by Dr Karl Kennedy off of Neighbours.

I know a lot of people are sniffy about Jo - usually the sort of person who thinks she "betrayed indie" by presenting a daytime radio show and playing Kylie - but I always found her a sincere, human presence on a station filled with braying gasbags.

The Live Lounge segment was born on Jo's mid-morning programme and it was a fitting tribute that her final weekend featured one of the best performances in a very long time. OK, it didn't quite scale the heights of Leona Lewis's first ever stab at Run, but it certainly erased the memory of Florence and the Machine's screechy, joyless rendition of Halo.

The session came courtesy of Jamie Woon, with his melifluous voice and his interesting facial hair. First up, he played his current single, Lady Luck. Following swiftly afterwards was an acoustic guitar revamp of Adele's Someone Like You (note that he reaches for the high notes in the chorus, which even Adele avoided in her spookily brilliant Brit Awards performance).

Both were smoother than a freshly shaved baby.






So goodbye, Jo Whiley, I will miss you. Except that you'll now be working in the same building as me and I'll probably spill tea all over you in the lift.

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Jamie Woon - Lady Luck

Let's be honest, readers, there are several reasons to be suspicious of Jamie Woon.

1) His Brit School education.
2) His achingly fashionable production.
3) His achingly fashionable facial hair.
4) All of his songs sound like mid-90s R&B sweatmeisters Jodeci.
5) He has recorded an a capella version of his new single, Lady Luck, in a canoe in Cambodia, like he's on some sort of dubstep gap year. Urgh.

Jamie Woon - Lady Luck (Al Fresco)


But - and this is a big but (too big for Sir Mix-A-Lot, that's for sure) - his voice instantly overrides any concerns you might have. Jamie Woon wraps his tonsils around a melody like a crab around a rock. Precise yet soulful, modest but powerful.

As he croons in the chorus to Lady Luck, "this is something you can't synthesize".

Thanks to the brand new Day-And-Date release strategy at Polydor / Universal, the single went on sale as soon as it premiered on Mistajam's Radio 1 show yesterday. You can hear it below, and buy it on iTunes now.

Jamie Woon - Lady Luck

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Anticipation builds for James and James

They may not be able to afford a decent photographer, but these two men are being tipped for big things in 2011.

On the left we have Mr James Blake. I've written about him a couple of times (here and here) and yesterday, his forthcoming, self-titled debut album leaked online. Polydor instantly issued a "we will hunt you down and beat you with a cricket ball in a sock" warning to everyone who'd received a watermarked copy of the record. And also to some people who hadn't, just in case.

Still, leaks are a sure sign of feverish anticipation - and not without reason, because James Blake is officially "a good thing". His roots are in dubstep, but he has much broader horizons. Incorporating soulful vocals, twisted samples, and bowel-tickling bass, his songs are at once abstract and full of emotion.

I haven't downloaded the leaked record because I am an honest person (and also because my PC has gone nuts). But here's a video of him performing album track The Wilhelm Scream at the Royal Northern College of Music last week. It's sublime.

James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream

The man on the right is another dubstep-but-not-dubstep artist called James... He is 27-year-old Jamie Woon, a Brit-school graduate whose mum used to sing backing vocals for Stock Aitken and Waterman.

His oeuvre is dusky, sepia-toned electronica, and his current single is the gorgeously sedative Night Air.

Jamie Woon - Night Air

Isn't it nice to see the return of intelligent, emotional dance music?

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