AK Patterson today announce release details of their debut EP Shadows, produced by Charlie Andrew (Alt J, Marika Hackman) and due out on 6 July, 2018 through Andrew’s own Square Leg Records, in partnership with East City. The news arrives alongside the band’s first single & EP title track Shadows, and close on the tail of a support slot opening for Alt J at their BRITs warm-up show in February, with further dates booked through March & April (full details below). The new video for Shadows.
AK Patterson has been dubbed a ‘woman possessed’, disappearing to a place of fierce enchantment each time she sings. The foundations of Patterson’s dynamic voice – which switches across Shadows from a whisper to flashes of emotion – were laid growing up in a music-obsessed household in suburban Cambridge. The likes of Jeff Buckley and Bjork were played heavily, alongside a more unpredictable love for Portugal’s traditional Fado singers. A curiosity for the unknown was deepened by travels including a period spent by Patterson living with monks in Japan, where meditation studies were fitted in alongside work in rice paddy fields.
An accomplished guitar and fiddle player, she and her bandmates, Alfie Weedon and Nat Reading, build a rich musical world. Classically trained, Weedon provides backing vocals and versatile double bass playing, having previously spent time in Senegal living with the country’s traditional Griot musical storytellers and poets. Reading’s restless multi-instrumentalism meanwhile, has led him to play everything from Balearic pop to classical guitar with the National Youth Guitar Ensemble.
Speaking about Shadows, Patterson says; ‘The track is about being in a relationship with someone who is mentally absent, who hides in the shadows, cowardly and disconnected. Its about yearning to reconnect but realising that you need to let them go, the internal fight to shake them off for good and the overwhelming sense of relief when you do.’