They sup­port­ed Wolf Alice and Super­grass in 2019, scaled the heights of the BBC6 Music playlist and even have a Robert Plant con­nec­tion. The band in ques­tion is Pat­tern Push­er, who I saw at Beard­ed The­o­ry fes­ti­val last year and was impressed by their upbeat, funky set, skit­ter­ing sum­mer beats and beau­ti­ful bass lines.

Now the Exeter three-man band are releas­ing a new sin­gle (one of sev­er­al planned for this year), called Crazy Enough released on the 31st January.

What grabbed me on first hear­ing the new sin­gle is the dis­tinc­tive sound of the sitar and it adds anoth­er dimen­sion to the song. The sitar in ques­tion comes with an inter­est­ing sto­ry: it’s an elec­tric one, a fam­i­ly heir­loom passed down from vocal­ist Alex John­stone’s dad Phil (song­writer for Robert Plant and The Lev­ellers and co-writer on this song), and it’s Alex him­self play­ing the ori­en­tal-sound­ing riff that floats on top of the heavy bass and dis­co beats of Crazy Enough.

I chat­ted to bass play­er Ben Greene. One of the first ques­tions I asked him was about that sitar and what it was like learn­ing to play it: “It is shaped and tuned just like an elec­tric gui­tar and some­how they man­aged to get it to sound exact­ly like a sitar. We’ve fall­en in love with the sound and have start­ed using it quite a bit. It also means that Alex is free to bounce around the stage as he’s nor­mal­ly glued behind the keyboard.”

“We got to hang out with Michael Eavis in the Glastonbury fields”

The past year has been the best one yet and includ­ed sev­er­al fes­ti­val appear­ances, start­ing with Beard­ed The­o­ry in May. They looked as if they were enjoy­ing the expe­ri­ence. Says Ben: “That was the first main stage we’d ever played and it was sur­re­al set­ting up our equip­ment next to Edi­tors’ lor­ries and crew. We real­ly enjoyed walk­ing around and meet­ing the crowd after we played, every­one was so love­ly and sup­port­ive. We gave a talk in the kid’s area about play­ing in a band which was fun too.”

Pattern Pusher, band

More fes­ti­vals were to fol­low: “A high­light was Beau­ti­ful Days fes­ti­val where we formed a super­band with back­ing singers, an impromp­tu sax­o­phone solo (organ­ised on the day) plus leg­endary musi­cian Roy Har­ter (who can also be found occa­sion­al­ly join­ing in with the Bar Stew­ard Sons of Val Doon­i­can and Celtic Social Club).

The band’s Glas­ton­bury moment sealed the sum­mer. “We won the Pil­ton Par­ty com­pe­ti­tion. It meant we sup­port­ed Super­grass (on their reunion gig) and Wolf Alice. We also got to hang out with Michael Eav­is in the Glas­ton­bury fields. It was an amaz­ing experience.” 

Crazy Enough is out now, 31st Jan­u­ary 2020.

See Pat­tern Push­er at:

31st Jan­u­ary 2020  Albert’s Shed, Shrews­bury
7th Feb­ru­ary 2020    Exeter Phoenix (Pat­tern Push­er presents)

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