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Patchwork Rattlebag tease debut album with glitchy and ethereal electronica single ‘Hook, Line and Riser’
Salford based experimental collective, Patchwork Rattlebag have released ‘Hook, Line and Riser’, the first single from their forthcoming album ‘Fragments 1’.
Frequently incorporating other artforms, the group constructs music with a strong vocal presence, featuring instruments, synthesisers, field recordings and beats. Consisting of three core members who value collaboration and curiosity, Patchwork Rattlebag traverse the spaces between the visual, audible, invisible and ineffable.
‘Hook, Line and Riser’ features glitchy, beat-driven electronica and overlapping, ethereal, and sometimes disorienting vocals to explore the question: ‘What does it mean to be the same but altered?’.
The track is made up of part/whole relationships and the collaboration of disparate parts. Expressed through uncompromising beats, ruthless basslines, relentless distorted synths, and concordant, Sardinian-influenced overtone voices, ‘Hook, Line and Riser’ presents fragmented images of subjective and social formation. The elements used to create the track form an unlikely totality, encapsulated in the phrase Sardinian singers use to describe an illusory voice created by the collective overtones of several vocalists: “la voce degli angeli”.
The accompanying music video for the track brings these ideas to life through data moshed environments featuring disembodied eyes, hands, and mouths, as well as medical imagery: individuals as parts of a whole.
Debut Patchwork Rattlebag album ‘Fragments 1’ is set for release on 21st Nov via YMTC.
It is easy to see why a songwriter might be drawn to a story like this. Relationships rarely finish as neatly as people would like, and the space between “it is over” and “maybe we should try again” can produce plenty of material. For Dysmusia, that space becomes the setting for latest single “In your eyes”, out now through Now Listen.
The Irish singer-songwriter has a knack for keeping his writing close to everyday life, and this track benefits from that approach. He looks at an old relationship that has already gone through several attempts at making things work, then focuses on what happens when those feelings start creeping back in.
What makes the song appealing is the balance between sincerity and a lighter touch. Dysmusia is clearly invested in the situation, but he does not turn every moment into a grand declaration. There is room for a bit of humour and hesitation along the way, which keeps the song feeling natural.
The arrangement gives the song a pleasing lift. Acoustic guitar sits at the heart of it, with the dropped tuning adding some richness and a second guitar bringing extra colour. The result has folk at its core but carries enough indie-rock influence to give it a little extra punch.
Dysmusia’s Irish background is another part of the picture. Based between Antrim and Dublin and coming from a musical family, he has developed a style that puts storytelling alongside contemporary guitar sounds.
“In your eyes” brings those influences together without making a fuss about them. It is a personable, melodic track about feelings that refuse to follow a neat timetable, delivered with enough warmth to make the story easy to get behind.
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