Eliza Bagg leads a complex musical life: working as a classical opera singer, she has soloed with the New York Philharmonic, performed in Meredith Monk’s opera at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and toured Europe with the legendary John Zorn. While making her own music under the guise of art-pop solo act Lisel, she’s also collaborated as a vocalist with some of the most renowned experimental artists, including Ben Frost, Julianna Barwick, Daniel Wohl, and many others, all while playing indie rock venues and lovably dingy basements. One day, it’s Lincoln Center or The Kitchen, the next it’s an outdoor LA ambient series. She was always torn between her two worlds, and it wasn’t until she began work on Patterns For Auto-tuned Voices And Delay that she discovered a way to merge them together. Patterns comes out of Bagg’s experience as a vocalist singing Renaissance and Baroque music along with the work of modern-day minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. “I developed a vocal processing system that allowed me to change the idea of what my instrument is,” Bagg says of the album’s genesis, a system that combines her virtuosic singing with autotune and delay effects to create a melding of human and machine. Sure, she’ll admit it. “I’m a sci-fi nerd,” she says, with a laugh. “I’m a Blade Runner and Battlestar person. I love things that explore how society interacts with machines.” While making Patterns, she dove first into Renaissance polyphony and chant. The music of Hildegard von Bingen, Thomas Tallis, and Carlo Gesualdo is a familiar world to her. Starting with Renaissance and Medieval singing styles and idioms, she added processing and electronic world-building to bring out new, expressive qualities of those styles. From there, she improvised in these styles, fed the performances into Ableton, and incorporated modern day hyperpop (like SOPHIE) and ambient electric sounds and aesthetics. From Philip Glass to Charli XCX, Carl Stone to Grimes, Patterns makes radical connections. Yet, it was important for Bagg to maintain the spiritual origins of these vocal techniques. Patterns For Auto-tuned Voices And Delay stands within those traditions, using voices to transcend the cerebral and overwhelm the listener, all while evoking a unique set of references that span five hundred years.

TRACK LISTING

1. INTRO: Liturgy
2. One At A Time
3. Stalactite
4. Wingspan
5. Immature
6. Blades Of Grass
7. Plainsong
8. Polyphony For Voices
9. At The Fair
10. Rising Mist
11. Whirlpool

Born from the Red Bank of New Jersey, the early days of Monster Magnet were a cosmos away from the major-label, alternative rock boom that would suck the band into the shiny MTV world of the early to middle 90s. Originally formed by Dave Wyndorf, John McBain and Tim Cronin, Monster Magnet lysergic oozed into the world in 1989 with two demo tapes – ‘Forget About Life, I’m High On Dope’ and ‘I’m Stoned, What Ya Gonna Do About It?’ – making it perfectly clear from the start where they were coming from. This was a band revelling in bad trips and the death of the hippy dream with a Manson Family stare, playing squelchy lo-fi psychedelic music with a rabid punk rock sneer, like The Stooges terrorising Hawkwind at the most unpleasant free festival imaginable. There were tales of entire audiences at their gigs being spiked with LSD. It didn’t matter if this was true or not, it all added to the mystique. This was indeed a satanic drug thing, you wouldn’t understand.

Those two demos formed the base of what would become their pivotal ‘Spine Of God’ album from 1991 and the ’25…Tab’ EP, which featured the mesmerising 32-minute opus itself, ‘Tab’.

Long considered to be the true essence of Magnet’s early psychedelic voyages, ‘Tab’ is finally returning to earth’s stratosphere with the release of ‘Test Patterns: Vol.1’,

‘Test Patterns: Vol. 1’ features a 2021 remix of ‘Tab’ by John McBain, alongside the original demo, recorded in 1988 and then released on the aforementioned ‘Forget About Life, I’m High On Dope’ in 1989.

“When Magnet started, John and I worked in record stores in Red Bank and Dave worked in the comic bookstore and we made a lot of tapes for each other,” recalls Tim Cronin. “A lot of ‘check this shit out’ kind of stuff…Hawkwind, early UFO, Amon Duul, Can, Skullflower, Morgen, Loop, Crystalized Movements, early Alice Cooper, Walking Seeds, Butthole Surfers, Spacemen 3. When we recorded the first demo and got to TAB, we just beat the shit out of it until it became heavy, noisy, weird, mean and either too long or not long enough, depending on your mood. Everything we wanted in a song (at least everything I wanted in a song), punishingly psychedelic. Jersey Shore krautrock.”

TRACK LISTING

Tab (2021 Remix)
Tab (original Demo, Recorded In 1988 & Released On 1989's ‘forget About Life, I’m High On Dope’)

The members of Szun Waves may not have been collectively in the same country, let alone room, for over two years, but that hasn’t prevented them from realising their third album, Earth Patterns.

The trio – comprised of producer Luke Abbott, saxophonist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet) and drummer Laurence Pike (Triosk/PVT/Liars) – recorded the album sessions together at the tail end of their 2019 European tour, locking themselves away in the studio for three days of improvisation. They emerged with hours of music, some inspired by their live shows, most born fresh in the studio itself, ready to be moulded into the group’s third album in five years.

However, with Laurence marooned in Australia, and Luke and Jack grounded in different parts of the UK, it meant an unexpected reassessment of the band’s creative remit, and the enforced long gestation period almost inadvertently ended up creating the most fully-formed Szun Waves record to date.

Where second album, New Hymn To Freedom, had its face tilted up to the heavens, Earth Patterns is a more grounded record, and in places, a more claustrophobic one: Wyllie’s saxophone squalls ripple in the background as Pike’s dense drums clatter, both shaped and guided by the atmospherics of Abbott’s synths. Moments of jazz harmony collide with cinematic soundscapes; long searching passages build into kaleidoscopic frenzies.

“I think the record we've ended up with is an emotional outpouring,” Abbott says. “There's a fluidity to it that feels like we tapped into something quite raw. The last record felt like drifting in space but I see this new record as a journey from the outer reaches of the universe down onto the earth, like a macrocosm to microcosm arc,” he explains.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Exploding Upwards
A2. New Universe
A3. Garden
A4. In The Moon House
Side B
B1. Be A Pattern For The World
B2. Willow Leaf Pear
B3. Atomkerne

Makeness drops his debut album, "Loud Patterns" on the Secretely Canadian labe. Crafting tracks which make a virtue of disparate influences, Kyle Molleson manages to pull off something difficult: songs which have been tirelessly worked on, although sound loose-limbed and to-the-point.

"Loud Patterns" is noticeably indebted to house and techno; there are 4/4 rhythms, and a no-nonsense directness that harks back to the Detroit pioneers. Channeling avant-garde experimentalism and an outsider’s interest in pop, Kyle embraces the distance between those two poles.

Cosmic Slop, an underground institution in Leeds, was another touchstone. As Kyle recalls,'That place was definitely an awakening in terms of dance music.' It boasts a hand-built, peerless soundsystem, a near-pitch black dancefloor and a music policy that ranges from Dilla instrumentals to Detroit house. It takes dance music away from regimented structure, fashion and trends and into a freeform world of creative, one which Kyle thoroughly embraces.

"Loud Patterns" arrives after a series of releases that have established his particular, in-between approach to dance-minded music. He put out two EPs on Manchester-based imprint Handsome Dad, a one-off single with Adult Jazz and self-released Temple Works EP; Whities also released a limited-edition white label of a Minor Science dub of one of his tracks.

Containing single, “Stepping Out Of Sync" - 'for me is about losing a little bit of a grip on reality,' says Kyle. 'There’s a big nod to the world of pop music in the track and I wanted to reflect that in the video too. Josha and Felix, who directed the video, came up with this great time splicing technique using a custom 3-camera rig. The idea was to use the technique as a character in the video to add a sense of detachment from reality and subtly invert the upbeat aspect of the music. I had also been talking to my friend Maddie who is a brilliant dancer about working on some choreography for the video. These aspects seemed to come together perfectly when Josha and Felix started sending ideas across. I think the video really captures the range of emotions that exist in the track, it’s upbeat and positive aspect alongside a layer of dissonance and confusion that lies under the surface.'. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Loud Patterns
2. Fire Behind The 2 Louis
3. Who Am I To Follow Love
4. Stepping Out Of Sync
5. Gold Star
6. The Bass Rock
7. Day Old Death
8. Rough Moss
9. Our Embrace
10. 14 Drops
11. Motorcycle Idling

8th instalment from the mighty Relative and it's a belter! Vinalog churn out some more tapey, squashed but mightiyl infectious house music, full of their usual grit, charm and swing. This release concentrates on four traxx all based around the same theme - soundsystem friendly bangers for the peaktime. Ranging from loopy vox, machine-code drum and sweeping breaks, this is specialist tackle for DJs out in the field. Tough and uncompromising, with a very live, highly energetic feel yet never losing its unrelenting grip on the dancefloor. Absolute magic, every last one of these jams. John Swing and EMG could well be the hottest thing in house right now. Most recommended.

'Violet' is the new EP from Shield Patterns. The duo released their highly acclaimed debut album ‘Contour Lines’ (5/5 in The Skinny) in summer 2014 and this follow-up EP features four brand new tracks from the Manchester-based creators of electronic dark-pop music.

Violet' is a lovingly crafted progression from 'Contour Lines'. The experimentation found there has been explored further to feature samples made from clicking bones, field recordings, heavy drones and a starker approach to production. On first listen the sound is more minimalistic than that debut album but multiple layers gradually reveal themselves over time. Brentnall’s vocals were singled out for particular praise in early reviews and she has refined her vision further here, with her lyrical concerns focussing on the intimacy of bodies (“drip-feeding” and “mouths”, for example) and her voice arranged into swirling loops like those which introduce and underpin final track ‘Monument’.

This is electronic music that juxtaposes warmth and cold, journeying from industrial to natural, from claustrophobic to expansive.

TRACK LISTING

1. Splinter
2. Silver
3. Age Of Ice
4. Monument

We never really had Patterns down as masters of Acoustics and Oneirology. Bedroom dreamers maybe, a Mancunian guitar band of course, but with Waking Lines – the eagerly anticipated debut album – this is a band marking themselves out as true scientists of songcraft. With its array of field recordings, samples, original compositions and an epic haze of spellbinding loops, sonic sparks are set to fly from this thoroughly modern shoegaze-pop record.

Patterns’ fusion of head and heart may well induce a dreamlike state but across Waking Lines’ 10 tracks, every note has been constructed with meticulous focus. This is a band who’ve always known what they wanted to achieve – a group who together and individually, have spent time honing their craft not to mention their spectacularly colourful live performances into an entity that’s indisputably Patterns. “Listening to American bands like Deerhunter and Animal Collective, we learned you can be different and still be a guitar band” Ciaran says. “Once Patterns formed we knew exactly what we wanted to do with it, and recent shows have been a culmination of a lot of things, including the use of visuals and making it a real experience to come and see us play.”

Made up of foursome Ciaran McAuley (vocals/guitar/keyboards), Alex Hillhouse (bass/samplers), Jamie Lynch (drums) and Laurence Radford (guitar/samplers), the band’s unique approach is what has had DJs from Mary Anne Hobbs and BBC 6music’s Steve Lamacq foaming at the microphone. Upon hearing Patterns’ equally glistening and smouldering wall of noise, Huw Stevens picked the band to perform at Swn Festival, Rob Da Bank chose them to play at Bestival, and there have been shows all over France and Spain, not to mention a scholarly hometown show amongst the book shelves of Manchester’s John Rylands library. Already Waking Lines has been a long time coming, but it’s been well worth the wait.

Complemented by an array of psychedelic visuals, Patterns’ knack for transcending both time and space can transform even the dingiest back room of a pub into a star-filled galaxy with an array of shimmering, delicately melded guitars and evocative electronica. Take recent single ‘Blood’ which was mainly inspired by the band’s fascination with aesthetics; “it inhabits a fantasy space and was conceived by trying to express through sound how it feels to watch VHS,” Ciaran reveals. Adds Alex, “We bought a load of vintage VHS equipment and experimented with feedback effects to create fractal patterns, which led to the video and the artwork for the single.”

Abandoning normal recording techniques and expensive producers the band opted instead to record the album themselves. With one good microphone and a laptop they have managed to create an infinitely large imaginary space to express their vision. From ‘This Haze’ which was written eschewing male ‘indie’ singer conventions by thinking of how a woman might sound had she sang instead, right through to ‘Our Ego’, a song about the use of psychedelic drugs in psychotherapy in the 60s, Waking Lines flawlessly depicts that point where dreams and reality meet. ‘Broken Trains’ is an anthemic statement of intent, it’s driven drum sections cutting like razor-sharp shards of light through water, whilst ‘Induction’s ethereal tessellations of sound dance like the Northern Lights through a foggy gauze.

“The hazy nature of our production and decision to avoid linear story telling in the lyrics is meant to create a similar kind of emotional response to the portrayal of memory and the unconscious within surrealist art like that by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali,” explains Ciaran. “It’s like those weird dreams which feel familiar but quite alien at the same time.” A word to the wise, it’s time to wake up. Patterns are here to open your mind and shape your world.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Haze
2. Blood
3. Broken Trains
4. Face Marks
5. Our Ego
6. Waking Lines
7. Street Fires
8. Wrong Two Words
9. Induction
10. Climbing Out

First release from these emo / art rockers, since their "No Kill No Beep Beep" album in 2000. Two new tracks, produced by Ian Mackaye.