Humanity Hallows Issue 5 Out Now
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By Jacqueline Grima

Folk band Patch & The Giant will be visiting Manchester this month, with fans set to enjoy their unique sound at Gullivers on February 13. After the release of their single ‘Flowers’, the band, who enjoyed huge success on last summer’s festival scene, will also be releasing their debut album All that we had, we stole in the coming month. Humanity Hallows recently caught up with Angie Rance from the band to ask about the tour, the album and the stories found in music.

Tell us about your background. Who’s in the band and how did you get together?

Luke and me were the embers of a previous project that never really happened. We started a new band, in which a few friends came and left, then along came Gabriel on his violin, initially as part of a collaboration with another band, but he never left once he’d started playing with us. A pretty similar situation followed with Derek and Nick. Thus became Patch!

You are releasing your debut album All that we had, we stole in February. What can fans expect?

A lot of variety. We’ve tried to capture a bit of everything really and we enjoyed bringing in instruments that we don’t often get to use live, such as double bass, baritone horn, banjo, grand piano and electric guitar. There’s a lot of contrast but we’re hopeful that listeners will agree each song has the core Patchness it needs to be part of the cohesive album we’ve designed it to be.

The album has a standout title. Who came up with it?

The song came first and the title just seemed to ring out. It captures a lot of what we’re trying do with the album.

Tell us about your recording process.

Sublime and emotional. We recorded as much as we could live, on the strong advice of our producer Nick Trepka. It was exhausting and there’d be hours upon hours where we forgot what daylight and fresh air felt like, but we had a sort of otherworldly energy powering us through it at all times and Nick was sure to allow us breaks for cheese and hacky sack when we really needed it. We also recorded almost exclusively at night, when we seemed to get our best results.

The band’s sound has been described by Clash magazine as ‘patchwork, yet refined’. Would you agree with that description?

We were really flattered by that one actually, so yes we’ll take it. We’ve always had a lot of different lines of instrumentation and different colours, harmonies, rhythms etc and it’s not always been easy to develop this without it being messy or becoming an overbearing wall of sound.

The concept of ‘storytelling’ forms a huge part of what you do. Tell us about the relationship between music and storytelling.

Well I guess all music is storytelling, right? Whether its an instrumental or vocal led track? All pieces of music have a journey. A beginning, middle and end. But not necessarily in that order. Life is full of stories. If we didn’t tell stories then we’d all sit around in silence or talk about the weather. The exciting bit is trying to tell a story in different ways. I guess our job is to think of what stories we want to tell. What stories are worth telling that haven’t been told before. Whether we want to tell personal stories and our own emotional response to that or whether we want to tell other people’s stories. Its nice to have a mix, I think.

Your tour of the UK begins in February. What can fans who have never experienced Patch & The Giant before expect from a gig?

Questionable banter, advantageous multi-tasking and a dancing cello. If they’re lucky, a mediocre joke from a Scotsman. We’re also planning to bring out a couple of brand new songs.

You’ve previously had great success on the festival scene, having played The Green Man and the Cambridge Folk Festival. Any plans for this year’s festival season?

We live for festivals…. We are at our free-est in fields. We’re in the midst of confirming several plans right now but aren’t yet at liberty to divulge, which may sound far more intriguing than intended – we just have marketing embargoes to adhere to! Rest assured, we’ll be out there this summer!

Patch & The Giant will be playing at Gullivers, Manchester on Monday 13th February. For more information and tickets, visit the band’s website.

All that we had, we stole is available from February 10.