INTERVIEW: patten

Experimental duo patten create their own frontiers, disintegrating genres through the use of abstract, sample-based soundscapes. As Danny Turner discovers, linear questioning on gear and technique often hits a dead end

We meet up with the experimental duo and find out more about new album, Psi

There’s a lot to be gained from having a close look at the videos and the artwork. We try to make everything interactive and fun

How would you say the use of the Greek symbol Psi relates to the album conceptually?

A: “The image that the symbol represents is really interesting. Again, it’s a nice comparison to what we were saying about the visual aspect being really important. As a term, it’s weirdly fluid in its meaning, from the sign of the planet Neptune to a symbol for parapsychology and the paranormal, and so we chose it because of that. We definitely aim for our albums to be things that you can relate to in so many different ways.” D: “We thought it seemed a perfect way to describe the project at this point. Although we think of the record as something you can go and physically get on CD, vinyl or download, the live show, interviews and all of the stuff on social media are all part of that project. We’re in Psi right now – it’s almost like a period of time or a body of work and we’re still in the midst of seeing what it can be. Today is the release date of the record, so it’s definitely a great day to be talking to you – we feel it’s quite a landmark.”

Is it fair to say that Psi is a little more stripped-back production wise?

A: “Yes. As D was saying earlier, the fact that the album is the way it is means that the album is quite emotional. The idea behind it was that it was linked to feelings; the feeling of being alive wherever you are listening to it. It’s stripped-back, but it’s still patten, with lots of depth to the sound.”

Do you see music as a process of honing and perfecting, and is it a case of less is more?

D: “A lot of different things feed into it. One is the question, ‘why not?’. I suppose we put ourselves into different environments that are challenging to us, things that we find interesting and are an important part of the conversation out there. We’re always interested in changing the parameters of what patten is. In November, we’re playing a festival in Germany which is piano-based and we’re performing specially made piano renditions of our back catalogue. It’s not like there’s one trajectory.”

Sounds like it would be quite a challenge to transcribe your music to piano?

D: “We’re always interested in throwing ourselves into unfamiliar environments. We’re not classically trained musicians, certainly not with piano, but we feel that diving into those situations can give you different insights that you might not see if you were classically trained. There are times when experience within a certain field can be a crutch and get in the way of developing things that are new. We definitely embrace spaces that are unknown to us so that we can try and develop in more interesting ways.”

Another difference is the inclusion of vocals. Are you using them as a channel of communication or is it more to add texture?

D: “It’s funny because the music has always had vocals in it. The last two records both had vocal-led tracks and guitars but they’ve strangely not been part of the conversation around them. From our perspective, they’re not disguised or hidden on purpose but a lot of the processing is such that a guitar might not sound like a guitar anymore. So having vocals is not new, but on this record they’re a bit more front and centre in terms of the mixing and we were definitely playing around with ideas of Pop music and song structures when it comes to writing and the spatialisation of sounds. We’re really interested in the line between things, where they cross-pollinate and become non-standard. There could be a track that you’d think of as a really Ambient piece, but to us we’re hearing it as a melted-down Pop song, and people can hear things that sound Poppy on the surface but we’re maybe channelling this sort of Stockhausen-related thing.”

Are there any hidden codes on this release?

A: “Well we don’t want to give too much away, but we’d definitely say there’s a lot to be gained from having a close look at the videos and the artwork to find different things. We try to make everything interactive, and fun actually. We try not to waste any of these spaces. If people out there are looking and listening, then we try to give them as much as we can of what we’re trying to do in as many different ways. So yeah, have a look, have a look [ laughs].”

Is your anonymity part of the fun element or would you simply rather people focus more on the art and less on you?

D: “By highlighting certain elements of our presence out there in public, we’re not hiding anything but more trying to show things about the way that artists and performers in general present themselves. We don’t really see all of our approach to performing, making music and sharing ideas as hiding anything rather than being selective of what we do present. So it’s definitely not something we see as closed; we’re actually super-open.”

Do you have a fixed studio location?

D: “It’s a mixture. When it comes to gigging or playing live, we would look at that as much as an extension of our studio as sitting on a train or waiting in an airport lounge. We’re never really switched off and right now we’re actually in a space that we use to test out live stuff. I’d say we have multiple studios, in the sense of our phones or our flats. We see everywhere as a potential place for musical ideas to happen.”

So you don’t have a fixed location where you can collate ideas and arrange them?

D: “That’s the thing; we wouldn’t push it as one particular space. I think there’s stuff that comes together on stage when we’re working together on-the-fly and other things that happen when we’re back in a more domestic space working on computers and with bits of hardware. We try and

Do you see electronic music as having a particular direction or is it increasingly heading towards being some limitless, free-form construct?

A: “I think a cool thing is that the idea of genres and the distinctions between them is something that is melting as time goes on. It has become easier for people to dip into all sorts of different types of music. You don’t even have to be centred on Western music; you can find compilations from anywhere around the world or go and listen to something on YouTube that’s got two views. It really is as open as your imagination and I think that you’re seeing a shift, not just from electronic musicians, but all musicians are responding to that openness.”

use all of those different spaces. Obviously, when you’re on stage there’s certain things you can’t do, but there’s things that you can do in those situations that you can’t in other environments. That’s why we think of our ‘studio’ as a network or collage of different spaces, because it feeds into what we do creatively and musically as well.”

Do you prefer not to discuss specifics?

D: “We don’t really want to limit it you know? That’s a really important thing for us. We were at this event not long ago and someone was talking about this programme called Radial, made by a company called Cycling ’74. It’s kind of old, but I think they’re bringing it back out. I mean this is years ago, but I remember us getting really into that and taking what we needed out of it then moving on. I think that’s still how we approach stuff in terms of software. We’re really open to what’s out there; there are so many possibilities it’s insane. So we don’t focus on any one particular thing. I think you can hear it in the music – there is this hybrid sound to it.”

Do you create your own sound libraries from vinyl, gear or field recordings?

D: “It’s an interesting question. We don’t tend to sample other music, apart from the Re-edits because that was a specific outlet – not because there’s anything wrong with doing that, but for some reason because we feel like there’s so much more for us to still explore when composing from scratch. But we do sample a lot in respect of found sounds and field recordings; we use a lot of what you might call non-musical sounds and that seeds into a lot of our idea generation. We do put together libraries of sounds, but they come together naturally and before you know it we end up with these quite specific libraries and catalogues of samples and sonics. We make clear decisions about what we want to do, but sometimes in the process of doing them we actually start to discover unexpected aesthetics and qualities that we didn’t necessarily predict. It’s quite weird how at the start of a project we have lots of different things, but this world starts to come together which is very clear and distinct, and that’s a very exciting stage to be at with Psi.”

Will you go out with proper recording equipment to source sounds?

A: “We use a combination actually. We have played around with binaural recorders and things like that, but we really like the fact that you can use your phone or find stuff online. We don’t really limit it, but we definitely use all of those methods. Effects are a big musical tool for us actually. Sound as a flexible material is a big aspect in terms of how we produce things. Some ideas for a track could start out on guitar or by manipulating a field recording that we’ve produced and processed.”

And do you adopt the same approach to using hardware?

D: “We don’t use hardware synthesizers very much, but we use hardware effects quite a lot. We’re really interested in how open the possibilities are with software and reprocessing computer-generated or field-recorded sounds. With physical hardware, it’s probably some of the things that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. We like using an old Akai mixer and this old Boss SP-303 Dr. Sample, although we don’t really use it to sample but as an effects box. It’s funny, but someone found and gave us this old Casio drum machine, and there’s nothing too interesting about it apart from the metronome, but once you set that going you can change the tempo slider and make these really weird Geiger counter rhythms.”

Although you’re very free-thinking in your approach to making music, would you agree that modern technology has enabled you to put your principles into practice so to speak?

D: “I don’t know. I think we’d say that the ideas come first. The tools are important, but if you took away computers tomorrow it wouldn’t really affect us. We try not to be steered by the technology. It’s like a duet between what the machine’s doing and what we’re striving towards, and we try to have a good balance where we let the machines, software and different tools influence us but we also try to push them to do things that they weren’t meant to do.”

Your live shows feature a distinctive audiovisual aspect. How is that developing?

D: “One of the main things we’re trying to do is expand outwards from the stage and break that line between audience and performer. We want to really get people immersed in our sonic and visual world, so we’re working quite intensively with lighting and different video systems to make things really integrated. We’re using lasers, video projection and LEDs and programming them to respond to our sounds.”

Is it difficult to contextualise your music through image?

D: “You mentioned something about sound libraries, and it’s the same with images as well. We’ve just got this whole world of material and we can throw these things together in different ways. We’ve got a show coming up at Corsica Studios and have put out a video letting people know about that. We’ve got all these clips of stuff that we’ve generated that we can now smash together and see what comes out. It’s almost like making the album allowed us to produce this whole environment that we could play in, and for the audience too, so they can explore this environment we’ve made.”

We try not to get stuck in any one piece of particular software, which means we’re able to keep that fresh approach

Do you use a specific software DAW for recording?

A: “We use bits of outboard, mainly effects modules, and there’s a sampler we quite like using for processing sounds. We tend to feed everything through a computer in the end to arrange, compose and shuffle things around. We use a whole combination of software DAWs. For the same reason that we use lots of different spaces to generate ideas, we try not to get stuck in any one piece of particular software, which means we’re able to keep that fresh approach by moving between different software environments. We might find an esoteric piece of audio hardware and get really obsessed about it for a short period of time, but then we won’t come back to it for quite a long while.”