Raised in North Queensland, Australia, Jarrod Mahon is not one to shy away from bold new endeavors. Once parting ways with his previous record label in 2019, Mahon chose to go fully independent, relocating to Berlin in 2019 (where he still resides), despite having no contacts at all in the country.

What's more, having recorded/performed under the pseudonym Emerson Snowe for over a decade - during which time he home-recorded five albums and 13 EP's, toured with the likes of King Krule or Ariel Pink, played showcases SXSW and the Great Escape, the works - Mahon took that brave, most un-commercial decision to release under his own name and start almost totally anew.

"There was never really a concept to that name [Emerson Snowe] other than having some kind of separation from who I was as a person," Mahon explains, "using a moniker gave me that confidence to push myself further mentally and to give myself some kind of a freedom".

And through the process of creating what would become his debut album, Mahon saw that he had outgrown the need for this protective persona.

'Everything Has A Life' was meant to be the debut Snowe album", he admits, "but after I finished mixing it with Syd [Kemp, co-producer] I realized that I had actually grown a lot and was much more comfortable with who I am and what my personal beliefs are." The choice of 'Everything Has A Life' as the album title, pulled from beauteous opening track 'All I Know', neatly summarizes this new outlook: moving on from 'self-pity' of the past-self by becoming present for the loved ones around you, improving understanding of one's own self, via the wider world at large.

That track marks the first written during a lockdown stint in LA where Mahon wrote and recorded every day for 2 months, produced nigh on 250 demos and birthed the bulk of the record.

It also brought Mahon back to his all-time favor-ite, Sufjan Stevens' Ilinois and its blend of widescreen orchestral landscapes and more candid, naked acoustic-leaning variations - an important influence for the album's stylistic contrasts.

Another key inspiration for the record too brought Mahon back to his roots - those full-bloom strains of his Mum's Be-loved Neil Diamond, an annual Christmas irritant to Mahon as a child, yet an artist he's come to respect in adulthood.

"Whatever the reason, with age I came to love the big show band sounds," he says, "the idea of a performer on stage with a massive orchestra with strings was amazing to me." With the help of producer Syd Kemp (Ulrika Spacek, Vanishing Twin), such grand designs could be met.

- "When we first met, he asked me if I would like real strings on it. I said of course." Enter Magda Mclean on violin (Caro-line/the Umlauts), and Gamaliel Rendle Traynor on Cello (Sweat, Fat White Family), whose strings helped lift the record to romantic new heights.