Late night lullabies: Winding down with Skinny Pelembe

This week, Johannesburg-born and London-based artist Skinny Pelembe takes the decks for our Monday Mix series.

The singer, who signed to Brownswood Recordings back in January, made waves earlier this month with his debut single “Spit / Swallow” – a splash of mellow pop-psychedelia laced with soulful guitar and soft hip-hop beats. It’s a combination that has already helped prick the ears of Radio 1’s Huw Stevens and 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne, as well as Giles Peterson, who selected Pelembe to be part of his Future Bubblers programme in 2016.

“In a way, I centred this mix around one of my first tracks, ‘Baby Laxmi’” Pelembe tells Huck. “I made that the day my brother – in Indonesia at the time – told me my niece was born. There weren’t really any words to get across the feeling, so it ended up as an instrumental. The seven instrumental tracks leading up to [that track] on this mix are definitely sonic and stylistic references that I made when writing it, but are also all songs and beats that soundtracked formative moments in my own child and teenhood.”

“I guess I’ve put together a sort of lullaby mix,” he adds, jokily. “Probably more for myself than anyone else.”

Listen in full below:

Find out more about Skinny Pelembe, and his upcoming live shows, on his official website.

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