- Martin Skogehall and Thomas Jaldermark, AKA Fishermen, say Patterns & Paths is an attempt to evoke the dark mystery of the ocean. Hearing the album, you may find that surprising. Where fellow submariners Drexciya made obviously aqueous music, these Swedes have a style that's far more urban. But for a brief interlude of seagull noise at the start of "Serpents," their bass-heavy techno brings to mind not the sea but the mean streets paranoia of early-'90s UK hardcore.
A slovenly, snarling mix of siren synths, icy stabs, doom-laden voices and excitable reggae MCs, Patterns & Paths falls somewhere between the concrete feel of Marcel Dettmann, the degraded crunch of L.I.E.S. and Boddika's spikier output. Most of it would slip easily into the darker recesses of a Ben UFO set. If on first listen Patterns & Paths seems intimidating, persist. Fishermen promised an album of diverse moods, and within the fairly narrow confines of their sound, they deliver. "The Four Skulls" is dub techno that trades in high-density hypnosis, its grimy textures and tribal percussion gilded with a lovely rising melody. That's a far cry from the loopy mania of "Get None," the industrial disco of "Rise" or the Kerridge-like noise manipulation of "Torments."
For all their rugged charisma, there is a nagging sense that Fisherman are riffing on modish styles of corroded house and techno without quite minting anything that's distinctively their own. Hopefully that will come, but in the meantime, this is a bracing debut.
TracklistA1 Greenhorn
A2 Hope Is Gone
A3 Serpents
B1 Get None
B2 Dyspnea
B3 Lost Teeth
C1 The Four Skulls
C2 Rise Scurvy
C3 Scurvy
D1 In Solitude
D2 Sunken Mosque
D3 Torments