"Baptise me with the courage that has seen you

Through great fire doodlebug and bombscare

The Courage of the Immigrant

Canonize the blacks dogs and irish

Who led me to be born to your bells

Raised me to not sink in you suffer

Nor perish in our plague of demolition

London, goodnight

Sundark and Riverlight"

 

This project started when I realized I had reached a ten year jubilee as a recording artist, my first EP came out when I was 19 and in that time my voice has grown with me.

 

I started out playing with just one instrument and singing with no microphones in folk clubs, on the streets and galleries, I missed that raw communication so much and the spontaneous energy of that live situation, which I am bringing back on this world tour ahead. When I went in to the studio I thought I was going to record a one man solo album, but I started to dream and heard bassoons and bodhrans, this is my first totally acoustic album and so I made sure that we were working with analogue tape and mixing desk.

 

I went on a mission to find a grand piano with the best bass response still full of character and I was told about Real World studios but the piano there was too new, so Peter Gabriel lent me his Bosendorfer Grand and later his Bodhran and Hammer Dulcimer, the album and I are very grateful.

 

At the beginning of the Lupercalia tour I bought myself a Celtic harp, I stopped playing concert harp just before my first full orchestra solo performance of Cesar Francks A Sharp minor aged 16 as I ran away from home and couldn't take the harp with me and had nowhere to practice, at 28 with a lot of water under the bridge I felt old enough to be reunited with the instrument again, I think having the harp back in my music has been a big inspiration for making this album.

 

Recording in Real World was what I desired so much for 'Sundark & Riverlight' to be as alone as I could by a river. I put the string Quartet up on the balcony of the wood room studio to have them suspended as if the sound for the listener was coming from the sun, then I recorded the woodwind quartet in the Pool Studio which is like an empty swimming pool in Bermondsey as if the sound was as a reflection on water.

 

A couple of years ago I met one of my heroes John Cale after he asked me to support him at the Royal Festival Hall and after our discussion, I suddenly felt allergic to the way music is being produced at the moment, so I knew I was going to start experimenting with acoustic recordings again, my ambition was not to open up my laptop but to retune the Benchside Spinet that had been gathering dust under my bed and open the lid and dream hammers and strings. There was a conscious rebellion on this album against the digital age of auto-tune and mass produced electronic landfill music. I want to present at my 10 year anniversary a musical biography.

 

I grew up with a love of medieval, minimalist and renaissance classical music as well as listening to Atari Teenage Riot and obsessed with labels like Planet Mu and Tigerbeat 6. My degree studying composition was aborted quickly as it was the same year I had the opportunity to release my debut album Lycanthropy and go on a world tour, I just felt at this point I wanted to revisit a minimalist medieval sound that's very dear to me. I would say this album was influenced by Stephen Micus, Shirley and Dolly Collins, His Name is Alive, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, The Rachels, Meredith Monk, Johnny Cash, Henry Purcell and John Blow. I chose to shoot the artwork at Hilles House in Gloucester a country mansion looking over the River Severn. rich in the heritage of family members such as the baroque composer John Blow and the rebel fashion visionary Isabella Blow.

 

Instead of compiling the highlights of my recordings from the last ten years I thought I would highlight the songwriting I felt relevant today to me first of all. As singer and songwriter I notice that some songs take on a life of their own once released, for instance I never knew that 'Paris' from 'Lycanthropy' would become such an important song for my crowd, often when I perform the songs after they are recorded, new words or meanings come to mind and then i start to improvise as to how I am feeling that night. I thought It was time after a decade to take a moment to document what these songs have grown up to be while I've been travelling them around the world.

I made my first album with whatever I had around me, a ton of passion and guts, a 4 track, then a laptop, I had little knowledge of audio engineering so a lot of soldering wires happened and microphones purchased that I didn't know whether suited my voice or instruments, this album is a chance to re record with better knowledge of how to record and produce my work.

Listening to all the songs of the last ten years I have written to choose what was to be re recorded for Sundark & Riverlight was enough to drive me insane, I found many recurring patterns, hope out of anger, sadness out of joy, The title comes from the song "London" two words I made up when I was a teenager that i feel describe my body of work to date. Its been a wonderful self assessment to make this album, extremely cathartic, Its left me a clear slate, head and heart to be able to move forward with the next 10 years. I would like to thank Buffy St Marie who co-wrote the new version of Hard Times with me. This is the only cowrite on the album, we met in Barcelona during the recording session and after some amazing discussions about war, peace and revolution she channelled a new message and edition of the song for me. Vulture is now back to the original composition before the co-written Alec Empire version on The Bachelor.

I can't wait to embark on the forthcoming tour to share these songs and re-compose other songs that didn't make it on this album, I will be taking requests every night so get in contact through twitter and facebook in advance.. all songs considered.

Now all the work is done and artwork ready to be printed (which will be unveiled shortly), I write this letter to you from a beautiful Greek island which I took a slow night boat to get to, Im resting my voice which i began to lose at the end of the album. Yesterday I met one of the three pelicans of the island on the beach they are only seen rarely and when you meet one you are blessed with good luck.. I can't tell you how lucky I feel to be able to make this album, to have such a wonderful world wide wolfpack. I made this record as much for you as I did for myself.

With love, luck, sundark and riverlight xx Patrick Wolf

Release date, Tracklist and Pre-order info TBA soon, keep checking PatrickWolf.com for updates.

---

 

“Paris” by Saga Sig and David Motta from the artwork for “Sundark & Riverlight” 

“It was Seven in the morning when I lost the spark to give, the bath was spilling over my self pity spilling with it so I fled the country to start it all again and found myself in Paris in the cemetery rain” xPW

WHO'S AFRAID OF PATRICK WOLF?

FROM CHILD PRODIGY TO KNIFE-WIELDING, GENRE-BUSTING, BULLY-BAITING CHAMELEON, PATRICK WOLF HAS NEVER TAKEN THE EASY ROUTE. AS HE EDGES CLOSER TO THE MAINSTREAM, PIPPA BROOKS ASKS: IS THE MAINSTREAM READY FOR PATRICK WOLF?

Patrick Wolf is an artist who wears his heart bravely on his sleeve: his self-creation is an ongoing evolution entirely of his own making. There are no stylists, there’s no “media training”, just a strong desire to express, experiment and create something true, which doesn’t repeat itself and stands the test of time. At 28, having released album number five, Lupercalia, in June 2011, Wolf’s heroic trajectory represents a world of musical influences and collaborations from digital hardcore to folk, Marianne Faithfull to Tilda Swinton. Sometimes his diversifications have left fans and critics bewildered and even resentful – defying categorisation isn’t playing the game, which is about staying comfortably in your box.

I first noticed Patrick when he was practically still a child. At 12 and 13 he would swagger past the doormen at The Garage in Islington, all fur coat and attitude. My band, Posh, were on the indie circuit at the time and Patrick would show up at gigs and festivals with his sister Jo. He stood out; still childlike and shy, but burning with a desire to be part of a music scene that had wrenched him from his classical background. It wasn’t long before he took to the stage himself; his sister would press “play” on the four-track and he would play his car-boot-sale musical finds. Though he cringes about his musical output from those days, there was discernible drive and ambition. This bravado saw him join music collective Minty at 14 – 14! – and start to perform and collaborate with the characters he met on that Offset scene. That he was “different” isn’t really in question. As a child, his day-to-day pursuits had been considerably more erudite than most: “Thinking about it now, I was singing Catholic evensong three nights a week and I was being classically trained on the violin. I guess other young boys were kicking a football about!”

I meet Patrick for our interview on a cold, wet January night. He’s sipping sloe gin made by his dad and comfort-eating his aunty’s Christmas pudding. The house is full of spicy fumes and banter. Curled up in an armchair “found on the street”, in the cosily lit, tapestry-peppered love nest he shares with his boyfriend, William, Patrick reminisces with a smile about growing up and finding his way and his voice – although the journey has clearly been difficult at times. If you are bullied, as Patrick was by his contemporaries, you have to find a way to turn the hate back on itself, make it a positive. Learning to toughen up in the playground must have helped him hit the London scene with the fairly aggressive verve that was characteristic of his youth. Running with the Kashpoint (Matthew Glamorre’s early-Noughties club) crowd, where everyone was a performer – even if it was only on the dance floor – meant you had to fight to stand out. “I’ve bumped into a lot of people from my Disco Monster days, people I had fist fights with, who were sworn enemies, from different tribes – it was daggers at dawn! Suddenly, six years later, you’re in a bar and you’re laughing about that time. I love that I had all those moments. It was fun to have that kind of history with those people.” 

It’s funny to think about Patrick raging around London then when, right now, he seems so at peace with himself. “I’m just not that kind of person any more. I think empathy is really important now. When you’re bullied at school you’re told it’s because they’re jealous, and you have to think about that now; if you hate somebody, maybe it’s because they have something that you secretly want.”

The musical manifestation of this youthful aggression was the band Maison Crimineaux, which Patrick formed with Fanny Paul Clinton. “It was 2001, I had a lot of time on my hands and was making lots of demos. I had so much ambition. We didn’t like London at all but we were stuck here. Everything was so zhuzhy. There were no nightclubs we wanted to go to – it was all members’ clubs. I was working in Camden Market sewing on buttons, stuck in a little room, living on £30 or £40 a week… Fanny had a performance coming up at [early-Noughties club] Show Off and he commissioned me two days beforehand to compose some music for it. Fanny was a performance artist and wanted to cause trouble. His show was called KFC and he bought six boxes of fried chicken to throw at the audience! We had so much fun we made a band of it.”

I saw a few of their shows; on one occasion, Patrick pulled the chair out from under a man who was sitting with his back to the stage, and on another the management literally pulled the plug on the sound after only a few minutes. “Our goal after a couple of shows was to be thrown out of a venue within two songs but still get paid. We wanted to cause a bad reaction, but not through bad music; our aesthetic was baroque harpsichord music, Diamanda Galás samples and white noise. We were really obsessed with Atari Teenage Riot and we wanted all the people standing there with their fancy cocktails to feel sick and angry. We wanted to challenge people.” And they did. A formidable duo, they would make an impact just walking through the door, dripping in diamanté, second-hand furs and homemade clothes. When they were coming at you with a microphone it was a challenging experience – too much, in fact, for the world to be ready for, but a brilliant moment in London nightlife as well as in the evolution of Patrick Wolf: “It was great to have that adolescent moment as a band. I really needed to go through Maison Crimineaux with Fanny, I needed to have that ‘Fuck You’ time.” 

Despite the punk aesthetic of Maison Crimineaux, the classical element has never been far away from everything musical Patrick touches. A live performance sees him crisscrossing the stage, sitting at an organ, thrashing like a dervish on his viola, strumming the ukelele or even seated at his harp. The virtuoso element of his talent should never be played down. Like Dolly Parton – who blew me away in concert as she effortlessly switched between the banjo, guitar, harmonica or autoharp – you feel that Patrick could make a beautiful sound come out of any musical instrument. While Dolly comes from a country-music tradition, a lot of Patrick’s output is influenced by folk and his Cornish and Irish roots. Add to that the unmistakable voice, the stories he tells and the fact that music seems to be his driving life-force, as opposed to just a chosen career, and you have an artist whose recordings to date must only be the tip of the creative iceberg. It’s striking that he equates his love of music to a first romance: “You know, the first thing I fell in love with was electronic instruments! In 1997 there weren’t really any magazines about them, the internet was there but not like today, so little information about Moog synthesisers, theremins, any electronic or analogue synthesisers from the Seventies – and, remember in the Nineties, the Seventies were still thought of as kinda cheesy and associated with Prog Rock, not vintage and cool as they’re thought of now – so I had to order stuff through PO Box addresses. I’d scour Loot. I had a Pulp calendar, and every couple of months I wrote “Find a Moog! Buy a Moog!” It was so exotic, so from another planet, the sound, and because of the lack of information… So my first crush was this escapism through music. Maybe if I were 12 now, with information so much more freely available, I wouldn’t find so much fantasy in it.”

Patrick recorded his first album, Lycanthropy, in 2003. His début is like “my Dorian Gray” and he has had a love/hate relationship with it, not least because “I always think it’s scary that there are people who think there’s this Patrick Wolf I created back then that I’m straying away from in some way. It was made at a time in my life when things happened that I never want to go through again, the state of mind I was in at the time… You’d have to be crazy to want to be reliving those things at 28.” Certainly, the waif-like, elfin figure who sang songs with a heavy heart hit home with a hardcore of fans who “went to my music because they were crying on the bus on the way home from school”. With Wind in the Wires, Patrick was keen to distance himself from that first album, even saying he wished he’d never recorded it – although now he can see that there wouldn’t have been the second without going through making the first. But he feels keenly a sense of a certain group of fans who don’t want him to change. “It has a lot to do with youth obsession and not wanting someone to grow old [amazing he can say this at the tender age of 28!]. I’m not going to go back to wearing hot pants! I’m just growing my first beard! It’s taken four weeks to get to this but I just feel I’ve come of age in the past year as a singer and performer. There are always people who want you to stay what you were at the start. My mission statement at the beginning was: if you’re going to stick around with my music, be prepared for lots of different faces and sounds. I mean, it’s not a new concept; think of Bowie, Kate Bush or PJ Harvey. I think because there’s youth attached to my early records and we live in a very youth-obsessed society, and people are always looking for the first signs of ageing… I can’t wait to get into my 30s and 40s to see what music I’m making!”

For someone who often changes his appearance quite drastically, at least with every album, there is something of a statement in his “first beard” and there have been other significant physical moments for Patrick, such as when his voice broke, and the choirboy was gone. He had to search for another voice. That was the moment he discovered Punk, Rock’n’Roll, New Wave. “Hitting puberty was a really important, exciting time… I kind of grew away from everybody, everyone at school. It was around ’97 and that was when I started going to see live bands for the first time.” It was also the moment he became brave; the fact that he was never asked his age as he barged into gigs is significant, as is the way he carried himself at that young age.

Coming of age should be the moment you spread your wings but in a sense Patrick had already been flexing his freedom for years. “The moment I turned 18 it just got boring.” He left home at 16 and lived a fairly hand-to-mouth existence, busking and making demos before Capitol K released his first album. “When you’re 18 or 19, of course you’re going to set yourself up with quotes that haunt you when you’re 28 or 29. I’ve had so much shit from people because I don’t subscribe to the traditional way of being, looking or speaking that I ‘should’ as a singer-songwriter. I rarely get taken seriously in the press as a producer or songwriter because I think they’re bewildered by the packaging or the video or the things I say.” His videos have seen Patrick on all fours wearing nothing but a harness, writhing in the shadows and being choked by a whip in Vulture… but also cavorting on a perfect beach with a cast of good-looking extras in The City who wouldn’t look out of place skipping behind Elton John in I’m Still Standing. So there’s an element of the press that don’t get him: “I’m like Katie Price: love me or hate me!” 

It’s interesting that with the new album, he’s broken Radio 2, so lots of people are coming to his music for the first time. Uplifting, romantic and irresistibly euphoric, it’s his most commercial album since 2007’s The Magic Position but it’s “much more about calmness or peace. I feel like I’ve reached a new emotional platform. Some of the other albums are about a lack of love or emotional stability thematically and this album is a big slap in the face to all of those. A lot of artists like to hide their meaning in enigma, or a very British sarcasm or cynicism, and I’m not like that at all. I’m not about being mysterious.” It’s no secret that with William, who he plans to marry this year, he’s found Big Love and someone to share his life with. There’s often been a sense that he’s “been alone for too many of the great moments in my life” (Blackdown from The Bachelor). Not any more.

One of the great elements of a live show by Patrick Wolf is that, without being preachy, he’ll talk about artists like Derek Jarman or impart a little musical knowledge. I saw him give a brilliant tirade at the Roundhouse a few months ago against c*nts like Duran Duran who ruined the saxophone’s Punk image with smug solos. Even more wonderful was the fact that his dad then came centre stage and tore up his sax like newspaper to prove the point. Patrick doesn’t dumb down. If he wants to talk about a book he loves or an artist who’s influenced him, he respects his audience’s intelligence enough to share it with them. As there’s such a shocking amount of dumbing-down in the music industry today, this makes him all the more unique. He introduced me to mythologist-philosopher Joseph Campbell, who helped him through his teens. “ A Joseph Campbell Companion was the book that changed my way of thinking about my future and the things I could do with the – sometimes – little I had in life. It’s a compilation of some of the best and maybe more uncomplicated quotes from his theoretical writings. His famous book is The Hero With a Thousand Faces and his big theme is to ‘follow your bliss’. His tip is freedom – if there’s something you need to do in your life, however preposterous, imagine this big canyon and don’t be afraid to jump. I’ve never bought a ‘self-help’ book, I’m really averse to all that Oprah, Tyra Banks stuff. I bought it from Watkins book store off Charing Cross Road when I was about 16. I’d told my parents I was taking a teaching course two days a week but I was actually just bumming around. This book really helped me on my journey, leaving home, making music, making the leap. I still have it, a really dog-eared copy. I haven’t needed to dip into it for a few years but over the next year it might help me reassess my ‘mission statement’.”

The singer-songwriter can cut quite a lonely figure, and collaborations must be a welcome spark of inspiration. They don’t come much more inspiring than Patti Smith, with whom Patrick has played live on nine occasions. Patrick tells me his Patti story: how they met, where… “It was at a Dylan Thomas poetry festival in Wales. I was invited to play in the tiny front room of his boathouse. Patti was supposed to play the next day…” Patrick loves telling this story… “All my instruments were in the hotel lobby and she’d just arrived and put out a call to ask if anyone had a spare Dylan Thomas poetry book, and I had one – in fact, it was the one my grandmother left me in her will. I went to the staircase and she was standing there at the top, and she said, ‘Whose instruments are those?’ and I said, ‘Mine.’ And she said, ‘Can you play them?’ ‘Yeah.’ And she was like, ‘Great, let’s do a show.’ She said, ‘What’s your name?’ so I told her, and she just said, ‘I’m Patti.’ It was so great. She taught me four songs in her bedroom and the next day we played in the boathouse and again that night in the town hall. It was all really improvised and nobody really knew what they were doing. I just love that! So many musicians are so precious. You try to do a duet with some, and it’s so complicated. I think from the old Offset days I’m really spontaneous. It’s so thrilling to make spontaneous music or art. I haven’t ever met anybody like Patti in the music industry, who is so exactly how I want to be. She’s timeless, ageless. She turned up with no tour support, wandered through the village with her camera taking photos, falling into conversation with people. She lives with her heart and eyes open. The last few shows I got to play with Lenny Kaye and all the old band. On the last show I did back-up vocals for People Have The Power and Ghost Dance!” I reflect that this story says so much not just about Patti Smith’s lack of pretension, but also Patrick’s fearlessness – not just to perform on the same stage, but to improvise, with no rehearsal, and just get up there and hold your own. With. Patti. Smith. Incredible. 

Strong women have featured large on an inspirational level for Patrick. Recently, he was reflecting on the 10 years since his first EP. One artist he refers to constantly is Joni Mitchell. What had she produced in the first 10 years of her career? “She’d done 10 albums, whereas I’ve done five. It made me feel very lazy. Pretty much everything she’s been through in her career helps me make the next step. Her work is timeless, classic, it exists outside the music industry. She doesn’t need chart positions and fame.”

I love the contradictions that are evident and played out through Patrick’s work: the desire to “vanish” and be “outside the industry” pitched against constant image changes and a desire for attention. It’s what makes him so interesting, endearing and exciting. His fierce intelligence and musicality, teamed with the unpredictability of the next source of inspiration, mean you can never second-guess his next move. And why would you want to? Artists like this don’t come along very often and, five albums down, and with no hint of flagging, Patrick’s only just beginning.

THE WYLDE Questionnaire

Do you collect anything?

Tapestries. I’ve got seven or eight now. I’ve got a really bad version of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. I love that people spend like, a year making these things and then they end up in a charity shop.

First record you ever bought?

I bought three tapes – Faith No More’s Digging the Grave which came with a sew-on patch that I put on my pencil case. All good...but then in the same week I bought Pet Shop Boys’ Go West and Erasure. I love that Erasure was balanced out by Faith No More!

Would you ever have cosmetic surgery?

Yeah, I’ve got quite a big face so there’s lots I could do with it! I have this trash side that would be fascinated by what would happen if I had a chin-lift or liposuction but then the stubborn side... I’ll have to wait and see.

Do you worry about going bald?

The moment I go bald I’ll just get five pudding-bowl wigs in yellow or red or whatever...

Do you get nervous before a gig?

If it’s over 2,000 people I start to feel it’s a much bigger deal and worry that I might not have the energy to be social and pull out the clown, the person who makes conversation.

Most memorable gig?

The most spectacular, I think, was at the London Palladium. It had a revolving stage, four different backdrops, a folk section, an industrial section... it was all really choreographed.

What songs have you covered?

I’ve done two Nico songs, I sometimes do live versions of a Kate Bush song but, generally, I don’t want to re-record the hits of other people. I always played Nico to my friends and they’d be like “Who’s this moaning old man!”[laughs], so I decided to record her songs in my voice – then they might listen to them.

Who’s your hero?

Joni Mitchell is totally my hero. As a producer, songwriter and character.

Favourite mainstream movie?

I go to romantic comedies. For me to see the Sex and the City film is really important because it’s an hour and a half of not thinking about music because I’m too confused by what’s going on onscreen! It’s like a holiday for me.

Favourite childhood movies?

The NeverEnding Story, Labyrinth, The Goonies. I was a huge Jurassic Park fan; I wrote to Steven Spielberg asking him to put me in Jurassic Park 2 but I never got a reply.

Would you like to be a parent?

I’d love to be a father. I’ve got my music-teacher streak in me. I’d love to. I think William and I are kind of stable enough to bring someone up to do something in the world.

Dear WorldWideWolfPack,

 

You may or may not be aware that the Wolfboard have given Patrick a birthday present each year for the last few years. I organised this last year and it went really well, so I’ve come up with an idea for this year’s gift. However, I need a lot more people for this idea, so I’m going to make more of a general fan gift this time, rather than keeping it ‘Wolfboard-only’. (But you should all probably join the Wolfboard anyway. I’ve met so many lovely people through there :))

I’d like to keep the idea to myself (for a number of reasons), but here’s what you have to do if you want to take part:

All you need to do to is email me a short & sweet message for Patrick. This may sound strange but please keep your message un-birthday-related. This will make a lot more sense when it’s all finished! Also, please do not send any messages simply demanding that Patrick plays a gig in your city - something like ‘insertplacenamehere loves you!’ would be okay though. *

Your message must be 150 characters or less (including spaces), and must include your name. Please also send me your full name (preferably - I understand that some people may not be comfortable with using their full names, so this isn’t totally necessary), location (doesn’t matter how specific you are on this – city, country, whatever!), and your twitter / Tumblr / Wolfboard username (please specify which). I will be putting this information in the form of a list of everyone who has contributed, so you do not need to include this in the 150 character limit.

I will also be making something with photos of Patrick with fans, and gig tickets – so if you have any of those that you would like to contribute, feel free to email them too! **

Please email messages only to worldwidewolfpack@gmail.com!

My friend has volunteered to help with the gig tickets bit, so if you could email those pictures seperately to brumalia2012@gmail.com, that would make things a lot easier for both of us. 

And another friend will be helping with the photos of Patrick with fans, so please email those pictures to sana1x2@yahoo.com - thankyou!

It’s likely that I will give the gift to Patrick at Lovebox Festival on Sunday 17th June. So unless anything changes, the deadline for any submissions is Sunday 6th May. This gives us 6 weeks to put everything together.

* I have a really clear idea of the kind of messages that I want to include, but it’s hard to explain without revealing the whole idea. So if anyone has any questions, you can ask them via email .

** This is all I need for now, but as I make the gift I may think of some more ideas to include - so be sure to check back on this post.