Staff Reviews

Patten - GLAQJO XAACSSO

Review by William Grant

A debut as riveting and obvious as it is shrouded in unanswerable questions.»

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heady, raw and visceral, patten's debut release - pronounced "glack-geut zack-so"* - is a maverick work of genius straight out of the london leftfield. working out from a space somewhere between early house, factory records and post punk, warp's mid-90s catalogue, shoegaze, musique concrte, and 2000s funktion one bass pressure, a myriad of forms unite into a rare, emotionally rich and euphoric whole with the precision worthy of a true auteur. this hallucinatory record is a truly unique and all-enveloping experience. the highlights are many and shift with each listen. opener 'ice' wraps a brooding vocal sample around a delicious guitar hook, '& our wild paths intersect' sounds like a tech-noir version of a kevin shields dreamscape, 'plurals' hangs a tropical mist over a burial style concrete dub and 'blush mosaic' sees a hypnotic bassline emerge amongst swirling incantations. like it's title, patten's lp appears as if from some parallel world; prismatic and mirage-like, soaked in the searing heat of urgency.
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