Elevator EP

Barbarossa, aka Londoner James Mathé, returns with the four-track EP Elevator, arriving just after his warmly received 2013 album Bloodlines. Recorded with electro artist Robert D Morris, previously known as Boy 8 Bit, it finds Mathé pushing further into electronic territory.

That shift comes through in the glitchy, unsettling Win/End and the instrumental mood piece Lupo’s Theme. On the title track Elevator, Mathé’s deeply emotive vocals sit inside a widescreen, cinematic production that gives the whole EP a striking sense of scale.

The filmic feel runs right through it, which makes sense as the EP was partly conceived as a soundtrack to a forthcoming short film written and directed by Montserrat Lombard and Sean Harris of Southcliffe and Prometheus fame.