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.


** Now making music under the name Boy Runaway **
Journey folk from the Cloudlands

If you're looking for my composition work go here: https://soundcloud.com/brunomerzcomposer

From the Kites Of San Quentin use various boxes and instruments old and new and make sounds come out of them. When the sounds turn into music we mash them together. You may call them songs if you wish....we call them experiments. Please enjoy responsibly. XX

Awards winning musicians & developers. BEATSURFING, RANDOM, PLAYGROUND, BEATFADER...
Founded in 2003, Herrmutt Lobby have released music on various labels – DUB, Studio !K7, Vlek, Eat Concrete, Thin Consolation, Catune, Detroit Underground – and across genres.
Alongside music, they’ve also devised and built various softwares, controllers, and apps that help musicians perform live with the freedom to express at the moment’s inspiration/instinct.

Join host and comedian Mark DeCarlo each week as he embarks on a great quest for food, travel and fun! Mark will be having interviews each week with interesting and unique folks across the world who travel for a living, including musicians, chefs, and comedians. Also, Mark is here to help YOU the listener with your travel-related questions. You might even be able to score some free stuff just by participating. We'll see you at A Fork On The Road! 

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Vieka Plays (:vee-e-ka p-l-aa-ys). Born, will die. A female singer-songwriter-electronic-fiddler-producer-engineer currently residing in the fair lands of Manchesterville, UK. Inspired and nourished by music and sound.

 Vieka plays her music full frontal, sometimes delicate, sometimes brash but always dedicated to the senses. Alikened to Björk, Portishead with a dash of Cocorosie, Vieka moves through you in a whirl of challenging stories and sounds created by all manors of electronic geekery that can be harnessed, beated and whipped into shape. 

...'Combining sonic brutality, unfettered on-stage physicality, never-quite-reassuring periods of calm and moments of breath-taking spectral beauty'...'Ostensibly an avant-garde musician in the Portishead/Björk mould mould, Vieka’s beguiling live performances set her apart from other experimentalists.'
 … 'Their live concerts can veer from dubstep mood-pieces to eerie swing narratives and sexual psycho-dramas all with an underlying Burial-style-soundtrack-David Lynch intensity'... 

With a lustful desire for the wild world, Vieka weaves through all manner of sounds; blending, warping and creating impassioned soundscapes with subtle sound recordings from nature, life and the wide-wide world. Obtuse creations of synthesised bass, glitch noise and samples come from deep within the digital spectrum while the vocals cut through unabashed.

'With a tongue stuffed thoroughly in her cheek she blissfully hovers her sound in the darker sides of life (or hoovers her music up from the filthy corner of the proverbial room).'

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