“There is something very genuine and at the same time very wrong in what I am doing” says composer Matthew Patton of his upcoming release The Infected Mass. Genuine, perhaps, because the LP is set to explore Patton’s personal grief at the loss of his brother in a plane crash. Wrong, perhaps, because the process involves navigating a profane path. As strings punctuate gaping silence on ‘First Degraded Hymn’, like contrails in open sky, the composition morphs into a musique concrète patchwork of black box recordings on ‘First Partially Recollected Conversation’, which incidentally recall the ambient passages of labelmates Godspeed You! Black Emperor. “The recordings are very disturbing”, says Patton. Indeed; slowly the listener realises that the mess of distorted voices are the final words of pilots, presumably aware of their coming demise. The overall effect, however, is disarmingly uplifting, like conceding to oncoming disaster.

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The Infected Mass will be released on March 17th via Constellation Records.

Dafydd Jenkins
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