You might have heard of Jude Woodhead, more commonly known as Saint Jude, a 20-year-old budding visionary from South London. Since releasing his first EP under his moniker in 2019, Jude has made his distinct mark on the London music scene with his emotive and evocative hybrid sounds. Ranging from New Age to UK garage, his clever and quiet appreciation for all genres has helped him craft love letters to the nostalgic club nights of his teenage years. Enclosed inside these scriptures are thoughtful compositions with layers of complexity and poetic lyricism.
Producing meaningful music hardly comes easy to Jude. Despite only being on the scene for two years, Jude’s embraced the lifestyle since he was a young teen. “I’ve been making music since I was really young. When I was 13 or 14 I used to make electronic tracks on Fruity Loops. I only started writing songs about three years ago though.”
Migrating from Fruity Loops Studio, Jude made his mark on Soundcloud with his exciting track “Beautiful Rain.” Inspired by his dad’s collection of Congolese, South African records and Four Tet, this song would be the beginning of a successful string of dance tracks and electronic bangers, each with a fresh perspective from the last. “[My creative process] is pretty different every time, most of the time I’m just making lots of sketches for tracks that don’t end up going anywhere, but every now and then I’ll come across a good idea, and then I’ll expand it into a full song, write lyrics. But it normally takes a while for something to become fully formed. I’m always working on a lot of things simultaneously.”
Jude finds difficulty describing the music he makes. “I don’t really like labels generally. Glows, who I share a [record] label with, describes his music and some of mine as ‘post-club’ music, meaning music to listen to after clubbing on the bus or whatever, but I’m not sure that describes all of my music.” His constantly evolving stylistic inspirations are a key part of what makes him a promising producer. “I try to bring together aspects from as much music that I like as I can, not so much in the music that I’ve released so far, but I’m working on my album at the moment, and that brings together aspects of UK garage, folk, ambient music and electronic and indie. I think for certain kinds of music it doesn’t make sense to try and label it.”
When asked about notable experiences that have shaped Jude’s approach to songwriting, he answers, “You’re influenced by pretty much everything you listen to and read and watch. In lockdown I was finding Bjork’s albums really inspiring, as well as Adrianne Lenker songwriting on Big Thief’s albums. Both artists have their own specific ways of writing about emotion and trauma, with Bjork particularly on Vulnicura, and I’ve been really influenced by them in the songs I’ve been writing recently.”
In August 2020 during lockdown, Jude casually dropped the highly anticipated track, “Bodies of Water”, which was a raw and honest masterpiece. I don’t deserve you but it’s that fire that won’t burn you it’s real life it’s red lights on the same streets every night can you see inside me another day? sings Jude before the track crescendos into an intoxicating symphony of upbeat percussions and synthesizers, cementing his signature sound. “Bodies of Water was one of the first lyrics I wrote, but I was basically trying to talk about human connection, anxiety, failures in communication, that kind of thing. I wrote the lyrics a few years ago so it was strange to release it this year.”
Aside from having a talent for production, Jude dabbles in bringing forth visual aesthetics to accompany his ambient sounds. Though his music video releases are few and far between, Jude’s vision birthed the beautifully shot arthouse piece, “Keep the Light Inside the House.” “It was a really long process, mostly because I’m still really new to making videos so it was really inefficient work. I think I’m not really cut out for directing music videos, but I really liked coming up with the ideas, and editing it together.”
Avid listeners of Saint Jude can anticipate exciting news from the artist soon. “I’ve got an EP coming out in the next few weeks, it’s gonna be five or six tracks. I’ve also got a new Jude Woodhead release – a couple of tracks I made a few years ago which is coming out on Just Off Pop, with two sick videos by Finn Rabbit Dove. I’m working on an album to come out in 2021 as well, and I’ve been making a few techno tracks in quarantine which I want to release soon! I’ve been making music with a few other people too, like Glows, Khazali, Sarah from Drug Store Romeos, so hopefully some of those collaborations will get released soon.”
Jude has given Sheesh Magazine an exclusive inside look at his upcoming unreleased EP, titled Bodies of Water. Featuring fan favourites such as “Bodies of Water” and “Keep the Light Inside the House”, this EP provides the perfect balance between Jude’s past accomplishments and his constantly progressing cognizance. A general sense of anxiety and anger is the main theme driving his creations. “Over the past year or so I’ve been using noise and distortion a lot more – I bought an akai reel to reel ¼ inch tape machine and have been using that a lot – running audio in at a high volume to overdrive the tape. I think the need to fuck with audio has been a bit of a response to a general anger I’ve been feeling at the world basically since the election late last year. I think I haven’t yet channelled that anger in a song, but I think it’s come out subconsciously in how far I’m pushing the distortion in some of these songs. The three most driven songs on this EP – Molina remix, Arms and the Archeologist were all mostly produced since then.”
Keep up to date with Saint Jude on Spotify, and find out when his newest EP will be released on his Instagram.
Saint Jude also provided us with his essential quarantine playlist, which you can stream to hear his favorite tracks and musical influences.
