Jamie Woon

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The beating heart of Woon HQ is an elegantly ramshackle shed at the end of a garden in East London. The house, which he shares with the Mercury-nominated Portico Quartet is punctuated with musical ephemera: three skinny microphones in the lounge; a full-bodied harp in the hallway - and a badboy soundsystem in the corner, where he’s playing selected highlights of his new tunes.

Woon, 27, has made a sonic step forward from the atmospheric, multi-layered Loop Station vocals that made his name. The new sound, premiered on his Spring 2010 tour with La Roux is bigger and heavier, fusing his future pop songs with '80s reverb, beats and bass. "I love reverb," he says. "It can be overdone but it can create extreme atmosphere. I got really excited by really deep sub bass with not much in-between. There's enough room for some twinkly stuff on top and this big cavern, for the voice." The new songs, like ‘Night Air' or the future bossa-nova of ‘Tomorrow’ carry the intimate emotions of his early sound into a whole different room; bigger, badder… heavier.

Singer, songwriter and newly self-taught producer Jamie Woon (it's his real name) made his name by playing live. He's got hundreds and hundreds of gigs under his belt, from endless spots in front of the microphone with just his guitar, an effects box and that unmistakable voice to supporting Amy Winehouse. He's fitted a lot into his live career so far: he's played in a full band with dubstep DJ and producer Reso on drums, he's curated tents at early editions of The Secret Garden and played Glastonbury, and taken stage at Sonar. You might say it's in his blood: his mother is Scottish folk legend Mae McKenna, a lady who did session vocals for a massive list of stars including Björk, Michael Jackson and most of the '80s popettes who passed through Stock, Aitken and Waterman's London studios. During which time, Woon was playing with Sticklebricks in the corner.

The shows have gained him big name fans including Mary Anne Hobbs and Gilles Peterson, who also fell for the select releases that Woon has set free: his 2006 recording of the traditional standard 'Wayfaring Stranger' came with a lauded Burial remix and in 2009 he released 'Solidify' with electronics girl Subeena on Planet Mu, quickly followed by the twisted G-Funk of 'I'm Going Wit You' featuring Debruit and LA's Sa-Ra producer Om'Mas Keith. Oh, and hotly-tipped dubstep producer Ramadanman gave Woon ultimate props when he sampled his voice on an early release, ‘The Woon’.

Woon's influences are similarly colourful. He namechecks nu-disco king Todd Terje, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder and Neil Young and 2010 future garage hotshots James Blake ("he's a beast"), Mount Kimbie and Ramadanman. He's a fan of '90s R'n'B, particularly Usher, D'Angelo and Boyz II Men as well as Cajun blues master JJ Cale, a man he describes as 'the original bedroom musician'. Woon likes to take the soul lineage back to its roots: "I like people who find different ways of doing the blues. It's at the root of all popular music. Blues and bass - that's the real hybrid."

Woon has now made the music that will let him switch from intimate gigs to stages with a bigger reach. "I was getting love within the dubstep and Gilles Peterson community and I was getting gigs in that crossover community, but the soundsystems were set up for DJs and it didn't really work for me. I want to be able to do anything musically and Ableton makes anything possible."

Consequently, he has taught himself how to make tunes on his laptop as well as in the traditional manner of guitar, pencil and paper, and he'll be incorporating it into his new live show in his own idiosyncratic style, of course. "I used to have a vendetta against laptops on stage but I'm over that now. I thought it was a barrier to the audience, but it's a natural progression – and I won't be using it, Jim will." The aforementioned Jim is Jim Wood, a fellow Brit School graduate and ex-member of The Pangs who's an integral part of Woon's new sound. The new live show, he says, is 'basically a hip hop set up, me and a DJ' except he's got three microphones, a guitar and an effects unit and his 'DJ' will be wielding a Mac, a guitar and adding some vocals, too. And he’s not giving up his intensely emotional solo shows – just adding more strings to his already jam-packed bow.

He's got gigs coming up with Vashti Bunyan and has plans to produce a mix tape where he creates more beats for the poets and spoken word massive he met in his years running acoustic night One Taste (although he's not involved any more), specifically the hyper talented south Londoner Kate Tempest, Polar Bear and Swedish singer Cornelia Dahlgren. Basically, and bassically, he's doing things his way. Always.