Cathode
July 26th, 2009 by sparky
Cathode will perform at The Big Chill 2009.
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Cathode – Biography
Cathode is Steve Jefferis, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. “Special Measures”, Cathode’s debut album, was released by Expanding Records in 2004 following early releases on Static Caravan and 555 Records. The album was acclaimed for its winning combination of precision-glitch electronics and a warm melodic sensibility, gaining the judgement of “first class” from John Peel and neatly summed up by Metro as “a moody, melodic soundscape of carefully controlled clicks, beats and bleeps, producing a crescendo of beautifully blended electronic rhythms …. a sound as emotive as it is creative”.
“Sparkle Plenty”, the second album released in Spring 2009 on Expanding Records, finds Cathode coupling the precision and warmth of the debut with a richer sonic palette – for instance, the skittering improv percussion of “Dream Feeder”, or the battered acoustic guitar and ticking clocks of “Nightly Builds”. Centrepiece of the album is “Structure Hunger”, a juddering serialist-krautrock wonder, which has its origins in a collaborative project with film-maker Adam Finlay at Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema to provide new soundtracks to a batch of vintage colour-saturated summertime movies.. Alongside Cathode, Steve has collaborrated with filmmaker Richard Fenwick on a series of short film soundtracks, and currently plays in the Warm Digits, a guitar-noise/krautrock/
The album title “Sparkle Plenty” is an oblique influence drawn from Steve’s day job as a clinical psychologist. “Sparkle Plenty” is developmental psychologist Daniel Stern’s phrase for children whose way of coping with caregivers who are unresponsive or depressed is to “sparkle” – with lots of smiles, activity and excitement, that masks the child’s authentic (possibly much lonelier) emotional state. It’s an apposite title for the record; Cathode’s music has always been unashamedly about creating something beautiful, which acts to sweeten something that’s much more melancholy underneath.
