Patchmarks digs through the archives of their various music projects for an insight into what informs their artistry.
By now, we hope you’re already up to speed with ‘naive’, the sophomore single from NSW musician Patchmarks.
Driven by off-kilter rhythms and an eclectic sonic palette, the track has been on heavy repeat in our office, so we simply had to catch up with Patchmarks — the proto-solo project of Alumi Emera — to learn more about what informs their artistry.
Below, Patchmarks provides a track-by-track guide through the “songs that led me to now.”
Each track is lifted from the catalogue of one of Patchmarks’ many music projects, including Vaporplaid, the four-piece band OSHIE, and eponymous project Alumi Emera.
Catch the full track breakdown below, and scroll down to listen to Patchmarks’ stellar single ‘naive’.
OSHIE — ‘War Alone’
A band I’m still in to this day! (albeit I started this band being a very different person). We recorded the Technicolour EP in under a week, at the time I was both drumming & singing in this band, and the drums were tracked in one day. Vocals were tracked another day along with my rhythm guitars.
The song “War Alone” is essentially about gaining insight into someone’s else’s feelings that you didn’t quite understand at first, but grew to understand, in this case the feeling of voluntary isolation and “loneliness”.
I wrote this in 2018, at a time when I was feeling isolated and weird, the growing pains of mid-20s were hitting me hard and I started understanding why someone would want to be alone.
OSHIE is still going, we’ve taken a step back from gigging and promoting ourselves publicly to focus on writing, kind of a revamp/ rebrand of ourselves into a different musical style.
We went on hiatus for a bit but we all missed each-other and missed playing together. I love those guys, best guys even.
I play guitar & sing in this band now since we found a (damn good) drummer. The EP is available on streaming and bandcamp. We still have a few CDs kicking around as well.
Vaporplaid — ‘Only You Tonight’
At a time where I was feeling jaded and disinterested in guitar music, and to some extent music in general, I got really into electronica, specifically Vaporwave.
I spent countless hours browsing bandcamp, downloading 1000s of obscure vapor/ electronica releases (which were cheap because labels would offer “buy our discography for X amount” deals).
Ethereal yet noisy soundscapes, gritty grooves sampling old disco, slowed down & chopped up 80s ballads, MANY things I didn’t think I’d gel with, but there’s something captivating about it, “music to dissociate to while sitting on public transit late at night” type stuff.
I felt a connection to it similarly to what I felt with punk rock in my younger years, but now old enough to understand the appeal; it exists outside of merit and sentiments of talent, hookiness or listenability, it’s all made DIY, in bedrooms, by people who may or may not be academically trained or even musically inclined, it’s a new listening experience.
Anyway I really found myself drawn to the textures and “sound” of a lot of it, and I wanted to see if I could do it myself. This was the first song I ever seriously attempted.
This song was the start of a 9 month adventure of making my first electronica EP “Love x Lost”.
I sent it to a bunch of labels and EVERY single one responded, and I picked Neoncity Records (as they had some of my favourite artists). They did a tape run of 200 cassettes and they sold out in the first week.
I was amazed, this was the first time I’d ever achieved anything substantial with anything musical I’d done, and it was with a collection of music that was so foreign to. The entire experience was incredible and I am extremely grateful.
Alumi Collection — ‘I Feel Different Today’
So to start off, the “Alumi Collection” is a compilation of songs recorded between 2014 – 2023, mostly released under my old moniker “Fuhri” which I ended up retiring due to growing out of it (as well as people pronouncing it as “furry” aha).
This song was originally from an EP titled Me ft. You, which I felt was one of the first fully cohesive things I made where I was like “this has a strong vibe and sense of self”, I was/ still am in-love with the lofi production of it.
The song is about starting to notice a difference after a long period of depression and inner-peril, that moment when things start to seem better (In hindsight, very similar to “i realise, i come alive).
There’s 50+ songs on that compilation and there are so many different genres, production styles and stylistic “eras” of myself. So much of it is from a version of me that wasn’t fully actualised yet, and I hold it dear (and am proud to have grown from it).
deathpissdoll — ‘don’t take away my agency’
deathpissdoll is an odd project, it’s a different side to myself. It’s basically the hybridisation of my roots and who I’ve come to be. It’s irreverent, queer, weird & frantic.
A mixture of punk, grunge, metal and electronica, all tinged in a bratty scenecore package. This song is about the modern phenomenon of therapy-speak and how it is weaponised.
It’s a very good thing that mental health is spoken about more openly, but it can become a double-edged sword when people who don’t quite understand or relate see it as a face-value thing, it’s quite easy to take away somebody’s agency with “oh they’ve got depression” or “they have trauma” as a means to invalidate or explain away someone’s experiences.
Nuance and context can often be blurred, as well as kindness and humanity. It’s very easy to make comparative assumptions about someone without knowing them, social media inflates this issue as it’s a world built on face-value performative perfection and the idealised “self”.
Anyway, I love this project a lot, it’s where I can express my weird and take risks, do what I want etc.
Patchmarks — ‘I realise (I come alive)’
This was the first track I recorded for patchmarks, and is the first track I’ve written since in FOREVER that has a focus on instrumental technicality, as well as being produced in a modern, slick manner (while still keeping aspects of performance I enjoy, such as live drums, no click track and no editing).
It started as a guitar riff, with the little bluesy parts and maj7 chords which I just adore, and also no distortion! Which is a massive stylistic change from previous stuff I’ve done going for metal-guitar tones and blown-out “wall of sound” fuzz tones.
Also much more lyrically focused than stuff I’ve done in the past, whereas I often went for abstract, openly-interpreted lyrics, this is much more straight-forward and personal.
I was coming out of a pretty rough time, and this song is about starting to feel good again.
Patchmarks — ‘Naive’
The second patchmarks track I wrote, I’ve had this instrumental motif kicking around for a while now, first recorded in a lofi state on Reel to Reel (named sjksjksjksjksjksjks on the Alumi Collection).
I struggled to come up with vocals for this for a longggggggg time, but something just clicked for me & I pushed it out within weeks prior to releasing.
Recorded live drums in the same session as “I realise, I come alive” (at El Horses in Nowra, thanks George). The song is pretty much about realising how no matter how much you’ve grown, and how far you’ve come, you’re still kinda silly.
The realisation of “Oh wow, learning to be a person is a life-long journey huh?”, like growing enough to know you’ve not grown enough I guess.
I’m really proud of the Patchmarks stuff, it’s been over a decade of self-discovery and musical adventure to get to this point, where I’ve done so many different things, in so many different ways, to then reach a point where I’m able to make stuff like this.
The idea of patchmarks is to do everything I love all at once, with full intensity, but cohesive & thoughtfully. No real limitations, but it has to be the best it can be within my grasp at the time.
I’d love for patchmarks to become a live performing band with input from other musicians, but for now, it’s all me.
I’d LOVE to drum, but I always end up singing because singers are hard to find (so are drummers, the two things I really like the most in music are singing and drumming, so it’s tough).
