Salford’s experimental collective Patchwork Rattlebag have returned with “Hook, Line & Riser,” the mesmerizing first single from their upcoming album, Fragments 1 (out November 21 via YMTC).
Blurring the boundaries between music and other art forms, Patchwork Rattlebag crafts immersive soundscapes driven by collaboration and curiosity. The trio—known for their fearless approach—blend vocals, live instruments, synths, field recordings, and beats, creating music that occupies the space between the visual, the audible, and the ineffable.
“Hook, Line & Riser” is a glitchy, beat-driven exploration of the question: What does it mean to be the same but altered? Ethereal, overlapping, and sometimes disorienting vocals weave through uncompromising rhythms, ruthless basslines, and relentless, distorted synths. Sardinian-influenced overtone singing adds a haunting layer, capturing the feeling of “la voce degli angeli”—the illusory voice created by collective harmony.
The song’s structure mirrors its theme: part and whole relationships, fragmented yet unified. The accompanying video brings these ideas to life through data-moshed visuals—disembodied eyes, hands, mouths, and medical imagery—reminding us that individuals are always part of a greater whole.
Patchwork Rattlebag’s debut album, Fragments 1, promises to push their experimental ethos even further. With “Hook, Line & Riser,” they invite listeners to question the boundaries of identity, sound, and collective experience.
Stream “Hook, Line & Riser.” https://ditto.fm/hook-line-riser
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Hello, this is Adam. I’m a producer and instrumentalist for Patchwork Rattlebag.
What is your creative process like?
A lot of the music is produced remotely. Every now and again we might be working in the same space, but most of the time it’s a case of one of us working independently on something and then sending it back and forth. Sometimes one of us will get so far with a project, and then another of us will pick it up and carry on with it. In most cases, a track starts with a song John has written, and he’s got a massive back catalogue of songs we’ve tried in different ways over the years, playing in previous bands and so forth. Sometimes I’ll remember a song from years ago and dig out an old demo recording, mess around with it in Ableton, and maybe it ends up going in a completely different direction, but John’s always interested in new ideas and interpretations of what he’s written. For me, the most interesting tracks are often created when we just completely rework an idea that we’d tried previously, and I think this reworking and remixing of material comes through in the album.
How would you describe your music?
I don’t think we stick consistently to a particular genre, but this isn’t a conscious choice. The tracks are very song-driven, with an emphasis on vocals and lyrics, and there’s definitely a folky influence here. But because we don’t have a conventional band lineup, we tend to take a very electronic approach to putting the tracks together. We also have an interest in electroacoustic music, field recordings, and the sort of experimental tape music tradition, and I think this adds a distinctive character. Some of the tracks on the album are really made from recordings of city life or nature but maybe processed to bring out some musical textures.
Are you planning any videos for your music?
There are a few video ideas in the pipeline. Chan really brings the visual element to what we do, so deciding which tracks to release as videos is very much part of the whole creative process. It’s deciding which tracks are going to work as an audio-visual piece, where the visual component really becomes a part of the track’s identity, and those might not necessarily be the obvious ‘singles.’ We just released this video for ‘Hook, Line & Riser,’ which is one of the more experimental tracks on the album, but when I saw the glitchy data-moshed visuals that Chan and John made, I thought it really added a new dimension. The vocals on the track are very expressive, but the way they are processed and the wider production has a sort of dispassionate, machine-like quality, which is complemented by these visual glitches. The speech-to-text generator, which prints the lyrics throughout the video, really makes it for me—I like how it keeps making mistakes and correcting itself.
If we were to peek over your shoulder, what does your studio look like? What gear do you typically use?
The software is an important part of it. We use Ableton Live, which allows us to build tracks in a non-linear way—we can arrange the track in a way that allows us to jump between sections and ideas rather than fixing it to a timeline, which is also useful for planning live performances. We use programming environments like Max, Pure Data, and SuperCollider to set up processes which produce variations, continuously sampling a vocal or rearranging a drum pattern, for example. We’re also big on analogue signal processing. Guitar pedals are used a lot, even in the tracks with no guitars.
What are your musical plans for the next 12 months or so?
We’ve got our album Fragments 1 coming out, and we’re going to be looking at doing more shows over the next 12 months. How we approach the performance is something we’re really thinking about. Some of the tracks have a lot going on, so when I and John are deciding how to play them live, we often need to create a new version for live performance or look at how we can use a computer to augment this without necessarily just playing a backing track. The computer is definitely a key member of the group for live performances. Chan has been adding live visuals, so this has brought another dimension in terms of how we think about what the performance looks like. I think we’re really interested in considering ways to plan a performance that moves away from the more traditional ‘band playing a gig’ approach. But we’re also always writing new music, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more new material ready to release in the next 12 months.
Hello, this is John, songwriter and producer
What do you think of garden gnomes?
I met a bailiff once that looked like one. He knows who he is. So, I don’t like them, no.
If you had a time machine, would you travel to the future or back to the past?
That’s a really interesting question. It’s a contender to replace the half-empty/half-full thing. I think it’s the future, right? I feel like I’ve already been to the past, or at least some of it. But then again, time goes towards the future, so we’ve all experienced that already. Anyway, I’m going to the future.
If you were to write an autobiography, what would the title be?
Well, That Was Pointless
Who would you want to play you in a movie of your life?
Bob Mortimer stars in Well, That Was Pointless. No other contenders. If that happened, I’d be done. Nothing left to achieve.
If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?
Did you remember to put the bin out?
