Multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wolf performs at Band on the Wall in celebration of his long-awaited new EP, “The Night Safari”.
In Wolf’s words –
“On the way home from a concert on a stage facing the Black Sea in Crimea I recorded a melody into my laptop and started programming on the plane home, trying to make a portrait of the storm rolling I had watched sitting backstage on the beach with an armed security guard. Many years later as I was finishing The Night Safari E.P I discovered that unfinished project and then the new string section and lyrics of a period of life I named “nowhere game”, a few years where I stopped singing all together apart from, I realised, to record “happy birthday” down the phone to my friends and family. Ultimately the song to me is a slow realisation of being trapped in any manifestation of a vicious cycle and a long way yet from knowing how to ask for help. The viola and violin parts on Nowhere Game and across the e.p are played by myself for the first time since my first two albums, proof to me that I had broken one of my own vicious cycles in the end and returned to my craft.”
Wolf is one of the most talented and idiosyncratic musicians of his generation, with a run of critically hailed albums, starting with “Lycanthropy” in 2003 to “Lupercalia” in 2010 which saw him incorporating everything from viola, celtic harp, dulcimer, baritone ukulele, piano, harpsichord, analog synthesisers and re-sampled field recordings in his music and collaborating with the likes of Marianne Faithfull, Tilda Swinton, Angelo Badalamenti and Patti Smith, among others.
“The Night Safari” EP is out 14th April.
A standing show. On sale 10am 27th Jan.