2013 release from British singer/songwriter James Mathé AKA Barbarossa. There were plenty of reasons for 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. But Mathé had other ideas. Bloodlines 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 analog gear and straight to tape.
