News Patterns

Patterns have today released their debut EP through fellow Mancunians and indiepop fanzine / clubnight combo Pull Yourself Together.

The ‘New Noise’ EP is available right now as a free download (and on SoundCloud, below) through pullyourselftogetherzine.co.uk, alongside a Limited Edition CD.

We sent the guys a quick hello, and a few questions to find out more about them and what they’re up to.

Hello Patterns, nice to meet you. First thing’s first: who are you, where are you from, and how did you get together?
Hello DIY. We are currently a Manchester-based band but are originally from various parts of the country. Ciaran and Laurence being of the Southern persuasion with Jamie and Alex of the Northern kind. We all went to uni in Manchester, bumping into each other at late night house parties and decided we should be making music together.

So, we hear you’ve just got back from ATP - how was it? Did you get stuck in the snow?
Despite being well prepared for freak avalanches in Birmingham and the possibility of seeing Sasquatch in the sommerset region, we got down there just fine. Although the guy who mixes our stuff got mugged by a seagull for his pasty which was pretty harrowing. We got to see like four hours of Godspeed! over two days which was awesome but definitely did something to our minds.

Your debut EP will be the first release through Manchester label Pull Yourself Together. Is the city doing well for new music at the moment, do you think?
Yeah it’s a really exciting time to be making music in Manchester. There’s so many great bands around at the moment making something genuinely interesting and different. I remember when we first came to the city it seemed to be full of Oasis copycats and people trading off the whole ‘Northern indie’ thing but it’s really different now. Bands like Young British Artists, Ghost Outfit, Weird Era, D/R/U/G/S, Plank! and Wu Lyf are all doing great things for the city’s image.

People like Underachievers and Pull Yourself Together have been awesome as well, they’ve been championing great music for ages through their club nights and much respected fanzine. That’s why it’s been so great to work with people who know the scene so well and have such a passion for music.

The press release we’ve got here says the EP is made up of ‘home recordings’ - is that a stylistic choice, or financial..?
A bit of both really we’ve been into the studio a few times for like a day and never really felt we got something that amazing from it despite costing us quite a bit. So we thought that we might as well use that money to buy equipment and do it ourselves. It means you have a lot more time to experiment with different approaches to writing and ways of using your equipment. And although it means our house is a horrible mess of cables it does give us results we’re much happier with. I don’t think we could have written music like this in a studio. We also have an awesome friend of ours Yoseff Yvel who mixes for us, and just makes everything sound amazing.

It also says you try to incorporate a myriad of different genres and instruments into your work, in part due to your diverse tastes. Does that lead to disagreements, or are you a pretty agreeable bunch?
Everyone’s up for an abrasive drone but there are some nights when someone’s like ‘maybe that one goes a bit too far.’ There are also some stylistic disagreements when Ciaran leaves the practice room for a while to come back to a funk jam dipping into Bitches Brew solos. He hates funk.

Do you have any other releases or interesting projects in the works?
We’re in talks with some people at the moment about the possibility of releasing an album which is really exciting, but we can’t say any more at this time.

And finally: if the band had a mission statement, what would it be?
Salford city radio advert: ‘If it’s too good to be true, it’s probably stolen.’

Patterns - New Noise EP by pullyourselftogether