There were plenty of reasons for Londoner James Mathé to simply keep course after the release of his well received debut album, Chemical Campfires in 2008 on Fence Records: a flourishing reputation as one of Britain's most exciting acoustic troubadours, a prominent spot in Johnny Flynn and Jose Gonzales' backing bands, the roar of applause from the audience at a sold-out show at New York's Bowery Ballroom still ringing in his ears. But Mathé had other ideas. “I loved the acoustic scene, but knew it was not all I was about,” he remembers. “So I dug out all my old Casiotone keyboards, drum machines and analogue synths and just started writing.”

Bloodlines, then, is a compelling reinvention and sees Mathé’s emotive missives from young adulthood rewired into elegiac electronic anthems, dusted with huge spectral gasps of reverb and soul-wrenching organ melodies. Unusually for such an electronic album, it was recorded on vintage analogue gear and straight to tape.  “I really fancied getting back to basics,” says Mathé “I was tired of trying to iron out all the mistakes in modern production. I wanted to record live to tape, keeping all the mistakes in, warts and all.”   

From the sultry ache of opener Bloodline – a nod to Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy “about not picking up the bad habits of the generation before you”, says Mathé – to the Pharrell Williams-inspired urban crunch of ‘Turbine’, all the way to ‘The Load’, written when Mathé was indulging in his love of Jurassic 5 era 90s hip hop, Bloodlines is a brilliantly varied listen that pulls and paws at your heartstrings.    If there's a gloriously loose, tenebrous feel to songs like the blue-eyed electro-soul ‘Pagliacco’, it might have something to do with the Londoner's organic approach to song writing. “I just sit down with my dictaphone and make sense of what comes out afterwards. The best stuff usually comes when I’m hungover or not really thinking. The minute I try to be clever with words, it just sounds shit,” Mathé laughs.  Instead, the album's lyrics burn with a simple, poignant immediacy and Mathé sings them with touching, soulful grace. 

Recently signed to iconic London label Memphis Industries (Field Music, POLIÇA, The Go! Team, Dutch Uncles), Mathé is influenced by everything from soul men Stevie Wonder, D'Angelo and Levon Helm to Dirty Projectors and Sufjan Stevens but points to one inspiration in particular for the overall mood of Bloodlines – Vincent Gallo’s cult '90s film Buffalo 66, a twisted romance about a tap dancer who falls for her convict kidnapper – “the end scene which features Yes's Heart of the Sunrise and the scene with Cristina Ricci dancing to King Crimson’s Moonshine at a bowling hall especially,” he notes. 

Tender yet triumphant, Bloodlines marks Mathé as one of Britain's most versatile and adventurous artists.


This is the official page for Producer Northern Lights 
All booking and general inquiries to Team TNL: thenorthernlightsMGMT@gmail.com

All music ©2017 The Northern Lights Records/BMI

Pre-Order the new studio album, "Night Swim" here. Out everywhere May 30th: https://northernlightsmusic.bandcamp.com

Thibaut Evrard/Bosco Olalquiaga Cubillo/Charles Meriot

Karate Master/ Writer Producer:  10,000 Emerald Pools (Borns), Striking Matches, Grizfolk, Nightbus, Greeting Committee, Hershey's, McDonald's, Sony Playstation.

PRESS:

"Jeffares voice soars above the hauntingly icy bass lines and chilly atmospherics. Bombs and death rays, corporate decay, and failed or failing love are just some of the bleak themes the band explore, and their album's title track might offer the best solution to the hopelessness of it all."
-- SPIN

"The charm of Snowden's debut is its understated authenticity: Underneath all the accoutrements, these are Jeffares's bedroom songs, and it's not hard to extrapolate to their simpler days as anguished acoustic ballads."
-- Village Voice

"The original Snowden taught Yossarian that man is matter-- kill us and we're dead. It's OK for stylish post-punk to matter, too, and Anti-Anti does so without forgetting to be fun."
-- Pitchfork

"[Anti Anti's] balance of gloom and grandeur is brilliantly executed, ultimately leaving the listener with an insatiable thirst for more of the same."
-- Drowned In Sound

"For all the discussion of concept, geography, and songcraft, it's the heart pulsing through the reverb that makes Anti-Anti a must-listen."
-- Stereogum

"It's clear [Snowden] aren't willing to just turn on the cruise control through [their] show; the performance is more like a constant pulse between implosion and explosion with each member able to flail or pull back seamlessly."
-- CMJ

"Such tracks as 'Black Eyes' prove that Snowden can play uneasy funk as well as its peers, but the music is most interesting when the band goes its own way."
-- Washington Post

"Snowden's music sounds like Interpol's dark momentum getting tripped up on the Arcade Fire's treacherous terrain - lacquered bolts of guitar judder over off-kilter percussion, and anomic vocals blear through the densely layered mix."
-- Paste Magazine

"On 'Anti-Anti' Snowden creates plenty more to admire than angry words. To find it, all you have to do is ignore the urge to dance long enough to sit down and listen."
-- MSNBC

"Snowden lace their upbeat, catchy guitar stomps with thoughtful lyrics diametrically opposed to mindless hipsterism."
-- Entertainment Weekly

"Anti-Anti is a cyclonic swirl of guitars approximating jet-engine drones, brackish cascades of water emanating from the bottom of a dank cave and shards of tuned barbed-wire."
-- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"The Cure never delivered gloom so buzzy."
-- URB

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