Photo by Preston Craig.

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard anything from Snowden. Too long. 2006’s Jade Tree release Anti-Anti introduced us to the Atlanta-based (now Austin) outfit’s infectious beats and Jordan Jeffares’ icy but compelling voice. Roughly a year later their DJ friends managed to somehow make their already beat heavy tracks even more danceable. Then they seemed to fizzle out. Jeffares explains what he’s been doing during the interim between Anti-Anti and Snowden’s upcoming release No One In Control.

Snowden will be playing tonight at DC9 with The Mean Season and Ocean Versus Daughter.

How long have you been in Austin?

I was in New York for a year and I’ve been in Austin for almost two years now.

How did you end up deciding on Austin?

We were looking for something different from Atlanta—where we’d been our whole lives—and we were looking for someplace that was affordable and just looking for quality of life. So we thought, “Oh, we’ll try out Austin.” [My brother and I] weren’t sure if we were going to stay here.

How is it working out?

It’s great. My brother’s in a wheelchair and Austin is an amazing city for someone with disabilities. Everything is accessible. You can drive everywhere if you want to or the public transportation is really good. It’s a very condensed city even though it’s small. It’s very well planned. And it’s warm all the time so you never need a jacket. It’s unbearably hot sometimes.

Is your brother still DJing?

Occasionally, yeah. Not as much as he used to, but yeah.

One thing that I’ve noticed about Snowden—especially with the new tracks—is that there is this collaboration with DJs and this appreciation for the dance scene. Is that related to Preston DJing a lot, or was that was something you grew up having as an interest?

With my brother being a DJ, I’ve always had that part of my brain going into how does a track feel or how does a track work for people who want to dance where you’re trying to find a place to stomp your foot. And that’s my brother’s side. Then from years of being in that scene, we’re friends with people who make that music now—people who actually do it as a living. So, it’s a lot easier to hit somebody up and say, “Hey, do you want to take a crack at a track?” because you’ve known them for eight years or ten years and sure they’ll take a crack at your track and try to make it bump a little more.

Did you record the new album on your own?

I tracked a lot of it on my own and then I went to a different studio to re-examine things and to do a lot of mixing. So, a lot of stuff that I cut ended up getting worked in on the record and we cut a couple things and we cut drums there and we mixed it and experimented with amp combinations to milk more out of the other stuff.

I mostly ask because it seems more minimalist than Anti-Anti. Less like this is a band.

The minimalist part was just better songwriting and not having stuff marching all over each other. I’ve been recording and mixing for a long time and records are a lot easier to mix and listen to and songs are better when they’re written well. So, I tried and I had too much time to go through and write this record properly so that it made more sense sonically.

It’s been a long time since the last full length album. Were there a lot of breaks in songwriting? What else have you been doing?

I have been writing and throwing away and writing and throwing away all along the way trying to figure out how to release a record properly with the right machine behind it for a long time. I didn’t want to just make the record and then just go ahead and hand it out because there’s a good chance that no one will ever hear it if you do it that way. So, I was waiting for the right scenario and it took a long time to find that.

Did the process take that long for Anti-Anti as well?

No. It did not. I guess I started working on Anti-Anti my senior year of college and it was out in 2006. So, a lot shorter. But the music business got a lot harder.

Who shot your video for “The Beat Comes”? Was that done in Austin?

No, it was done in Atlanta. I had a hit on Facebook looking for a young, hungry film student or new producer who needed an opportunity to try and put something out of their own build but still with a little bit of a budget to work with. That way it would be something that they would put work into and be proud of and because they created it, it would be good for their reel. So, I found the perfect fit with this nice young guy and that was the video that came out of it.

Did they come up with the concept?

He came up with the boxing theme and we honed it down from there. I didn’t want it to have a hard story but I was looking for some type of odd conflict and the light gender conflict in there—I think it was me who pressed for something like that to be in there.

Have you gotten to play that much in Austin with the current touring band?

No. We’ve only played once last year for SXSW and we haven’t played since because it’s hard to get them down here and the record hasn’t come out yet.

Where is the band based out of?

The guys I’m currently about to go out with are in New York City. I still keep in touch with the guys from Atlanta because you never know when someone can’t get off work or is going to break an ankle. It doesn’t hurt to keep people who want to go out and have fun and play for awhile.