When: 7.30pm on Saturday 1 March 2014
Where: Gullivers, 109 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LW
We’re excited to be helping Shield Patterns launch their next single!
Shield Patterns is a Manchester-based duo comprised of Claire Brentnall and Richard Knox. Dusted with delicate vocals and rudimentary beats and loops, Shield Patterns’ music is at once wintry and fragile yet suffused with a strong emotional warmth. Their songs are born in sporadic, cathartic bursts, with subtle lyrics inseparably intertwined with trembling piano phrases, tenderly blended strings, and hypnotic synth patterns. The understated sweetness of Brentnall’s voice is gristled by a dark, brooding atmosphere and subby bass-lines, creating unexpectedly textural songs that are inherently minimalist, yet infectiously hummable.
The duo have spent months carefully crafting and considering how to represent and enhance the studio recordings in a live environment with Claire performing the vocal and synth leads whilst triggering beats and loops alongside Richard. Meanwhile Richard creates a swirling mass of manipulating reverb, delay, percussion and bass, improvising with vocal effects and samples to form an ethereal, sensory overload.
After signing to Gizeh Records in June a debut single, entitled The Rule, was released in September, backed with a remix of the same song by Thom Sonny Green of Mercury Award winners Alt-J. This show marks the launch of Shield Patterns’ next single Dust Hung Heavy on 24 February. It includes remixes from Dutch Uncles, Veí and From the Kites of San Quentin.
Support for this special event, which is a co-promotion with Gizeh Records, comes from Swiss electronic folk musician Nadine Carina, who cites Scout Niblett, Jana Hunter and Grimes as influences, and Manchester duo Gymnast, who released their debut EP, Wait For Dark With A Heady Heart, in April 2013.
Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.