Album Review: Patrice “9”
In an attempt to get back into writing about music, I’m starting a series of posts where I try my hand at different types of music writing. First up, an album review of an artist I was previously unfamiliar with. I went to a local record store and dug through the bins until I found an artwork that caught my eye. It was German singer Patrice (Bart-Williams)’s most recent record, 9. I proceeded to listen to it, write down my thoughts, and then get better acquainted with his career before writing about it. Here is the review:
When Patrice released his last full-length album of new material, Life’s Blood, in 2016, the world was a very different place. Apart from the realities and the ramifications of a global pandemic, the intervening eight years have seen economic instability, multiple wars, and an ascendant blend of nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment that threatens to turn places like his home country of Germany into lands hostile to multi-ethnic families like his own.
But it’s not just the outside world that changed; Patrice himself is in a different place. Before the pandemic hit, the eclectic reggae-influenced artist had moved to Jamaica to take a two-year break and decided to built a remote studio on the island. At the same time, he tried to embrace a more sustainable, stripped-down lifestyle. He worked to minimise his carbon footprint and avoid excessive waste. All his food came from organic farming and his energy from solar power.
This simpler, more minimal aesthetic also shows up throughout his most recent album, 9. Even though he recorded hundreds of songs over the years between albums, the record is a mere 29 minutes’ long and made up of only nine tracks (hence its name). There’s a lot of symbolism behind that number for Patrice. It refers to his birthday (the 9th of July), which itself points to the artistic rebirth that he sees emerging from the album. There are also the nine planets of the solar system, as well as nine lamps on a beach in the cover image.
The songs in the album, which Patrice produced himself, are similarly minimal: short, compact and tightly wound. They groove but never let loose. The rhythm guitars and cross-stick snare accents are recorded dry and close-miked, entering songs one at a time, doing their duty, and then, in turn, disappearing. The production is crisp and professional, but all the space he leaves makes those dub-inspired delay repeats feel ghostly—they only highlight the emptiness around his voice. His tenor is youthful and nimble, as usual, but it can feel fragile at the end of phrases in songs like Sentinel and No Want, letting the analog echo scatter the tails into the distance.
Patrice has come a long way since his start as a teenager in the hip-hop scene in Cologne in the early 2000s. After a dozen albums, he has now settled into a more mature and personal sound, drawing on all the influences in his career. The rhythms in play are syncopated and upbeat, hinting at a vague idea of “island music”, but other than the jaunty, organ-driven Such Is Love, or the playful bassline running between the verses of Sun Is Out, the album rarely allows itself to feel festive. It often sits in moody, unresolved cadences.
The juxtaposition of contrasting styles is nothing new for Patrice. He has wide-ranging tastes and has never been afraid to place them next to, and against, each other in an album. The difference between earlier records like Nile and The Rising of the Son and 9 is which genres he chooses to contrast and how. Gone is the hip-hop interspersed with R&B and soul; now it’s a mixture of dancehall beats and dark indie pop.
The lyrics in the album also hint at some internal unrest. In the chorus of the opening track, Become Who You Are, he sings, “I'm outrunning myself to be someone else while becoming myself”, which might only make sense if the one he is trying to convince with the statement is himself. Even in the sunny Such Is Love, he muses that “It's the best and it's the worst / Oh such is love / It's a blessing and a curse”.
There’s a deeply individualistic streak running across Patrice’s entire career, clear to see when perusing his album covers through the years. In every image, he is photographed by himself. Sometimes looking straight ahead, sometimes to the side, sometimes just off camera. There are close ups, medium shots and wide shots. He wears a shirt in most of them, a hat in a couple. But invariably, he is the primary focus, out front and centre.
On 9, he stands clad all in denim, far away from the camera, still alone except for the nine symbolic lamps illuminating him on the beach. Their bright glow, and the vastness of the other symbols around him—the earth, the sky and the water—only make his isolation seem more stark. But it’s an isolation of his own choosing, as he declares on Undefined: “I am exactly where I'm supposed to be on the daily / and in my element”.