VIDEO: Barbarossa – “Turbine” – (Dir. by Montserrat Lombard) –
[media][/media]Just finishing up a North American tour with Junip, Barbarossa announces two more dates in NYC. He will join Pacific Air at Mercury Lounge followed by an intimate set at Littlefield in Brooklyn. Today he shares a new video for “Turbine” at Spin. Directed by Montserrat Lombard, a trippy take on the latest single from Bloodlines. Out onAugust 8 with Memphis Industries.
There were plenty of reasons for Londoner Barbarossa (James Mathé) to simply keep course after the release of his well received debut album, Chemical Campfiresin 2008 on Fence Records: a flourishing reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting acoustic troubadours, a prominent spot in Jose Gonzales’ backing band, the roar of applause from the audience at a sold-out show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom.
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.
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 Barbarossa as one of Britain’s most versatile and adventurous artists.
BARBAROSSA
06/20 New York, NY Mercury Lounge $
06/21 Brooklyn, NY Littlefield #
$ = w/ Pacific Air
# = with Helado Negro, M.A.K.U. Soundsystem
Barbarossa
Bloodlines
(Memphis Industries)
Release date: August 8, 2013
1. Bloodline
2. Turbine
3. Butterfly
4. Plague
5. Pagliaccio
6. S.I.H.F.F.Y.
7. Battles
8. The Load
9. Saviour Self
10. The Endgame
11. Seeds
BARBAROSSA LINKS: