patten (musician)

The first patten performances took place across London at alternative music venues like East London rock club The Spitz, Hackney Road's 291 Gallery and South London's Utrophia project space. Recordings were circulated among friends and at shows on minidisc and home-burnt CDR in limited editions.

In 2011, after a series of increasingly intense live performances ranging from the Tate Modern Turbine Hall to Corsica Studios, patten released the album GLAQJO XAACSSO on London-based label No Pain In Pop.[3] GLAQJO XAACSSO featured 12 tracks of lo-fi shoegaze-inflected electronic music, with heavily processed but still recognizable guitar and vocals featuring widely. The record was put together through writing in liminal states between waking and sleeping, then test-driving material live over the course of a number of months, and finessing in the studio to arrive at final versions. On release, the album was met with widespread acclaim from a broad spectrum of music fans from techno across to the experimental and indie. Interviews and press images from this period extended the exploration into reflecting on the way artists are presented and present themselves to a public of strangers, with obscured faces and non-standard interview approaches. The project's tradition in creative use of media spaces has continued through until the present, in materials like a playlist of silent tracks available on Spotify, the submission and publishing of identical answers to two different interviews, and a Q&A for Dazed answered entirely in Wikipedia links. [4][5]

After the success of GLAQJO XAACSSO, patten began to rapidly release music by other underground artists through their Kaleidoscope imprint, drawing wider attention to the work of others. The 2012-13 Limited Dubs cassette and digital series included Sculpture's ‘Slime Code’, the I’ve Been You Twice’ EP, Karen Gwyer's debut release, the double album ‘Cracked Lacquer/Vanadium’ by Yearning Kru and ‘Guardian Petted’ by California musician Jocelyn Noir's ALAK. These were met with various accolades from BBC Radio 1 to Wire Magazine, with many of the artists going on to sign with key independent labels such as Planet Mu, Software and No Pain In Pop. 2015 saw a cassette (Chrome Series) from visual artist Benedict Drew in and a split vinyl release (50/50) including Aldous RH (ex-Egyptian Hip Hop) and Tel Aviv's Vanilla Hammer. Recent releases on the imprint's 2017 Aether Editions digital-first series have been from The Newcomer, Actual Magic (a moniker of patten), and Japanese producer and DJ, Sapphire Slows.[6][7][8]

In November 2013 the signing of patten to Warp Records was announced, with the EOLIAN INSTATE EP released soon after in a limited edition picture disc, echoing the project's beginnings and experimentation with formats. Weeks later patten performed a live audiovisual set in front of thousands at Tate Britain as part of the Warp x Tate event in December 2013. The first LP for Warp, ESTOILE NAIANT was released in February 2014, supported by an extensive live audiovisual tour across Europe, North America and Japan.

It was during this period that patten began to release free RE-EDITS EPs, sampling, layering and restructuring fragments of existing music into new textural compositions. Tracks featured were from across musical worlds, fusing Sade, Drexciya, Siouxie and The Banshees, Pixies, Burial and Joy Division, The tracks were underpinned by dancefloor rhythms and the 2014 series were specifically created so as to produce an ‘endless generative mix’ when played on shuffle. Later RE-EDITS series eschewed this method for a more freeform approach, with ‘vol2’ remixing tracks by Death Grips, Rihanna, Tim Hecker, Julianna Barwick and Cypress Hill.[9][10][11][12][13]

In 2014, patten threw a series of club nights with live electronic music and DJs at Dalston's Power Lunches under the name 555-5555. The events were held in the basement venue with the group's signature heavy smoke machine and a minimal single video projection as lighting. The lineups featured sets from artists such as Logos, Karen Gwyer, Slackk, SFV Acid, Darkstar, Visionist, Fotomachine and Max Tundra.[14][2] Across late 2015 and early 2016, numerous design works attributed to 555-5555 with it expanding in 2017 into a creative agency including members of patten, and visual collaborator Jane Easlight. 555-5555 work unrestricted across forms, creating anything from graphic design for Disney's Tron run/R soundtrack,[15] to 555-5555 branded apparel, events, software, an NTS radio show, ongoing art direction for Dan Snaith (Caribou)’s Daphni and Jiaolong label, and pointed online videos encouraging their fans to engage in the political process.[16]

In collaboration with Hisham Akira Bharoocha,[17] patten contributed to Doug Aitken's Station to Station project, recording 'June 30th', an EP of new music created from found sound and improvised percussion made in one day at the Barbican Centre.[18]

In the same year, patten created several remixes for artists like Giorgio Moroder[19] and Björk. Their remix of her song Stonemilker was released as a single-sided 12" clear vinyl single.[20]

On September 16, 2016, their third album Ψ (Psi),[21][22] was released with the vocals of a member known as A featured heavily across the record. A first appeared publicly in Jane Eastlight's 2014 ‘Winter Strobing’ video and was later seen performing in patten at the Warp25 concert in Poland (alongside Battles, Autechre, LFO and others) and later Baleapop in France, Fields Moscow and Electrowerkz London for a McQ launch event. A number of highly distinctive videos were released for album tracks Sonne (Matilda Finn), Epsilon (Werkflow), Dialler (555-5555), along with animation and video for each track made by 555-5555 for their immersive AV show which had at this point expanded to include a full custom video system, lasers, LEDs, smoke machines, live electronic drums and digitally processed vocals. In December 2016, patten released the first in a two part series of live session videos directed by Greg Barnes capturing their live AV show in a cinematic style echoing the sci-fi Science fiction feel of their performances.[23][24]

In May 2017, following Psi by 6 months patten released Requiem, a four track digital-only EP. Music videos for each of the tracks were made available on release day via YouTube. Requiem saw a further distillation of their sound, with dry sonics and heavily treated hip-hop-inflected vocals coming to the fore. The EP preceded a headline show at London's ICA, where patten programmed screenings and installations and a 555-5555 pop up store alongside their AV performance. Screenings of art films at the event included Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey, Muntean/Rosenblum, and others. In late summer, an autumn AV tour across the UK, Europe, and Mexico was announced.

In September, they announced their contribution to work on beta testing spectral processing software created by U.S.-based software developers Unfiltered Audio for Plugin Alliance. patten produced a number of presets bundled with the software download alongside electronic composers such as Richard Devine, and Uwe Zahn.[25][26][27]

An extensive interview with State Magazine came out on October 5, detailing the Requiem EP and various reflections on the project, personal and political drivers and the creative process. On following day October 6, Dan Snaith's Daphni project released a new album, ‘Joli Mai’ with creative direction and design by patten's 555-5555 creative agency.[28] In November, The 555-5555 agency created a commissioned line of apparel for Dummy magazine, envisioned as ‘editorial in garment form’ celebrating the magazine's 76 favorite current record labels.[29]

A patten Live AV Japan tour in early December presented material from Psi and Requiem in Tokyo and Osaka alongside Sapphire Slows and Mouse on the Keys.[30] A few weeks later, 'Welcome To Today', an LP of "Blissed-out, melted down, DSP-refracted Motown Xmas hits", recorded by patten under the name Actual Magic and released via their Kaleidoscope imprint on Christmas Eve 2016, was celebrated with a series of music videos released on Christmas Eve December 2017.[31]

In January 2018 an immersive audiovisual installation titled ‘3049’ launched at Tenderpixel gallery in London.[32] ‘3049’ was created to imagine and create ‘non-dystopic collective future visions’, centering around the question ‘how do we make it to 3049?’. The installation featured sound, large scale projections, lasers, smoke machines, dot matrix displays, and sculptures. Additionally, a clubnight, radio show and a substantial publication was produced. The publication housed contributions from practitioners across forecasting, design, art, philosophy, music, science, cinema, and architecture, including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Coby Sey, Laure Prouvost, Johnny Golding, Isabella Maidment, Hisham Bharoocha, Mat Dryhurst, Susan Hiller, Sam Rolfes, Tai Shani, Liam Gillick, and Nkisi. This was available for free at Tenderpixel & as a PDF still accessible online.[33] An Amsterdam edition of the 3049 installation was presented at Sonic Acts, alongside an in-depth talk and film screening from pattten. Unsound Festival screened the film component of the 3049 project at Baranami Cinema in Kraków on October 8. In November, ‘Dialler’ from the album Psi was used to soundtrack a promo video for the agency M+A Creative.

Unreleased new material was performed at Tate Modern in a live AV performance titled ‘SS2018’. Programmed for the BMW Tate Live Exhibition, the show filled the Tate Tanks with smoke and coloured light to create a “hallucinatory environment somewhere between clubnight, installation, neurosci experiment and architectural intervention”. The same event hosted performanes by Sylvia Palacios Whitman and Christopher Rauschenberg.[34] In what would be the final duo formation shows with vocalist ‘A’ before returning to solo, patten performed a mini-EU tour support of LA-based electronic group The Glitch Mob, with shows in London, Paris and Berlin, again testing new, unreleased material. Under the 555-5555 agency name, they also presented live, realtime visuals for the LA group, scrambling their graphic archives nightly as a ‘555DigitalSeance’.[35] 555-5555 expanded operations to include a discussion forum in June 2018. Built as an alternative to standardised forms of social media, this was celebrated with coverage and interviews including The Guardian,[36] FACT Magazine,[37] Clash,[38] Resident Advisor,[39] Dazed [40] and Mixmag.[41] The forum was launched with a zero tolerance policy for racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic language or imagery.

The audiovisual installation ‘CB-MMXVIII (I’ve been thinking of giving sleeping lessons)’ was commissioned and exhibited by Somerset House in London for the Claire Catterall curated exhibition Good Grief, on the enduring influence of Charles Schulz and Peanuts. In the film featuring a 3D animated Charle Brown, ‘the figure flexes and formed through digital distortions, placing him under strains and stresses, pushing him to his very limits’. The film's soundtrack reworked Peanuts’ Vince Guaraldi jazz composition theme tune “Linus and Lucy’ to create a glistening, slowly morphing drone.[42]

An AV performance at Open Source Art Festival, Poland in September saw further-refined versions of new tracks being roadtested live, the first solo shows since Psi and Requiem. RE-EDITS vol 9 was released as pack of three videos and also as free downloads on Nov 21st with reimaginings of tracks by Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean and Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury's ‘Annhiliation’ soundtrack.[43] In 2018, official remixes for J Colleran and Let's Eat Grandma were released via Because Music & Transgressive respectively. A longsleeve tee dubbed ‘UniOmYang:)’ was released pledging continued support for the UK to remain in the EU. In December, patten was announced as being selected for SHAPE platform 2019 (Sound Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe) alongside a number of EU-based artists and projects.[44]

In June 2019 Dan Snaith's Daphni project released a new EP, ‘Sizzling’ with Creative Direction and Design by patten's 555-5555 creative agency. The campaign reached from vinyl artwork & packaging, to teaser videos and social media graphics.[45] Apparel releases from 555-5555 became more regular, with references and iconography spanning critical theory, contemporary politics and stark graphics.[46] After a short hiatus from live appearances, halfway through the year, patten emerged with heavy, club-focused DJ sets in Berlin, Ukraine and London.

• Official website
• 555-5555
• Kaleidoscope