Some bands are easy to pin down. Patchwork Rattlebag are not one of them. The Salford collective: three core members who thrive on collaboration and curiosity have spent years quietly building something genuinely unusual in the North of England’s music underground. Their debut album ‘Fragments 1’, released November 21st via YMTC, is proves the wait was worth it.
The album is an intoxicating tour of song-driven, psychedelic electronic music that visits moody, danceable electronica, psych-electro-folky textures, experimental electric guitars, and ethereal atmospheres. That’s a mouthful but honestly they’re all pretty accurate. This is a band that refuses to stay in one lane.
The Making Of Fragments
Led by signature, haunting vocal lines and backed by stretched, choppy and kaleidoscopic voices, ‘Fragments 1’ is assembled from a wide range of fabrics from music, philosophy, culture and life. The lyrics explore the cosmic and the mundane in equal measure, fleeting perceptions, dreams, subjectivity, the underside of things.
The album features four experimental interlude fragments that create space and intrigue between more song-based tracks like the cinematic, harmony-drenched opener ‘Shade of my Mind’ and glitchy single ‘Hook, Line and Riser’. It’s an album that borders on sound design, pulling listeners into moods that are sometimes beautiful, sometimes dystopian.
The story behind ‘Hook, Line and Riser’ is particularly striking. John Lowndes, the collective’s primary songwriter, wrote the track’s lyrics with his left hand while recovering from being hit by a car, with a piece of Meccano attached to a bone in his arm. Built from ruthless bass, distorted synths, and Sardinian-influenced overtone vocals, it wrestles with the question of what it means to be “the same but altered”.
When asked what gut reaction he’s chasing with the track, Lowndes is refreshingly direct: “I just want it to be a banger. A bit of a weird one, but a banger“.
Acoustic Detour
If ‘Hook, Line and Riser’ is Patchwork Rattlebag at their most confrontational, ‘Vertigo Dreams’ is the complete opposite and somehow just as arresting. With gently waltzing acoustic textures, shuffling percussion, yearning lyrics and transportive vocal harmonies, the track plumbs similar melancholic depths to artists like Talk Talk and Nick Drake.
The song searches tensions between contentment and insecurity, aspiration and wistful acquiescence, dreams and nightmares, featuring picked acoustic guitar, pulsing vibraphone, and broken electric guitar phrases. It’s the kind of track that sounds deceptively simple until you realise how many layers are quietly working beneath the surface.
This is Patchwork Rattlebag stripped back to singer-songwriter origins, and it turns out they’re just as good at breaking your heart as they are at melting your brain. Tracks like ‘To Find A Place’ follow a similar thread, with intricate guitar parts guiding listeners through poignant soundscapes, proof that sometimes the most experimental thing you can do is just write a beautiful song.
Salford’s Secret Weapon
Patchwork Rattlebag have been building their reputation slowly, carefully, outside the usual hype cycles and the people paying attention are exactly the ones you’d want listening.
Nick McCabe from The Verve has declared himself “an envious admirer”, high praise from someone who basically invented psychedelic guitar textures for a generation. James Young from Darkstar is even more direct: “Patchwork Rattlebag are genuinely a unique sounding artist. Given the saturation in record production in 2025, Patchwork Rattlebag do that rare thing of sounding entirely themselves whilst making really good tunes“
And he’s right. In an era where most experimental electronic music either disappears up its own conceptual arse or chases algorithmic playlists, Patchwork Rattlebag have found that rare sweet spot, genuinely adventurous but never at the expense of actual listenability.
Frequently incorporating other artforms, the group constructs music with a strong vocal presence, featuring instruments, synthesizers, field recordings and beats.. Formed in Little Hulton, Salford, their output has ranged from audiovisual installations to stripped-back acoustic performances —proof that “experimental” doesn’t have to mean inaccessible.
Worth Your Time
Unpredictable and full of twists and turns, ‘Fragments 1’ is both intelligent yet highly engaging at the same time. It’s the kind of album that rewards repeated listens, revealing new layers each time you return to it.
In Lowndes’ own words, the album explores “worlds within this world, or perspectives within the world“. They’re providing prompts, but ultimately, you are the one making the connections.
‘Fragments 1’ is out now via YMTC. Find Patchwork Rattlebag at patchworkrattlebag.bandcamp.com and @wearepatchworkrattlebag
