Patterns – Blood 7" LP

“A heady collision of blissed-out vocal echoes and shimmery weirdness” – NME

“Patterns boast superior depth and musicianship… it’s easy to get totally lost in the mix of ethereal sounds and shapes” – The Fly

The young four piece return with their second single to date ‘Blood’. Revisiting their DIY roots, the single was recorded almost totally in the bedroom of their shared house, with just the drums being laid down in a traditional studio. “We wanted to have ownership over every note, sample and reverb tail we made, giving up that control wasn’t an option for us”.

The process reflects a constant desire to craft and experiment with their sound and the result is a spellbindingly personal, spacious track that perfectly captures Patterns’ blend of thick guitars and celestial electronics.

‘Blood’ draws heavily on the worlds of ambient electronica and drone but fuses them onto a pop core, making something altogether more evocative, “These are pop songs remembered from your subconscious, with all the clutter and haze on show”. It reflects hours of time spent late at night hunched over old instruments, samplers and laptops crafting something both personal and expansive. “We wanted to follow the process of a bedroom electronica record but at the same time needed it to sound a million times bigger than that, it’s a bedroom recording that’s a world away from lo-fi”.

With an album currently being recorded and festival appearances at Bestival and Dot-to-dot lined up for 2012, the beginning of this audio/visual journey has really only just begun for Patterns.Blood is a song about memory, its constant kick and arpeggios provide a backdrop to old forgotten images of youth, remembered through grainy photos and warm analog tape. “ I daydreamed I was looking out of a fast moving car with blurred landscapes passing the window when I heard the beat and instantly knew what the song would sound like. The challenge then was recording it.”

On the flip side the soft edges of Blood are hardened with an almost post-apocalyptic sounding rave remix from the mysterious NO CEREMONY///.

Accompanying the track is a totally unique video experiment; “The song originally came from a visual idea so it seemed obvious that video would be an integral part of the project”. Working in collaboration with MCR Scenewipe they developed experimental video techniques in order to express this vision. Combining salvaged VHS equipment with modern technology they’ve created an audio-visual experience almost without peer.

“We’d been researching old video synth stuff for a while when Sam Alder from Scenewipe came across all these video feedback loops where you can create infinite fractal patterns by just filming a TV. Using old VHS cameras and video mixers we were able to feed footage into the feedback loops creating surreal psychedelic visions of our own” The resulting video aesthetic also forms the basis for the 7” artwork which was created and put together by the band themselves.

Patterns’ enigmatic rise to prominence is central to the new and exciting Manchester music scene that has emerged in the last year. Formed out of a common love of shoegaze and warp based electronica, the 4 piece have a created a clear psychedelic aesthetic that encompasses both sound and vision. Their incendiary live shows sit somewhere between a rave and a séance, combining homemade hypnotic visuals with drones and field recordings to make something far more strange and compelling.