As their Autumn tour of the UK came to a close, we were invited to catch the mighty PATTERN PUSHER live at The Barrel House in Totnes, a mere couple of miles from musomuso HQ.

PATTERN PUSHER are an amazing local band who have the knack of just getting everyone up and moving in next to no time at all! I look back to Boardmasters Festival which took place in August 21, they were opening The View stage on the Friday, there were plenty of people about but not so many at the start of their set, come the end, you couldn’t move in there, it was as if someone had been shouting ‘FREE DRINKS’ and everyone had literally come flocking in to get their fill. The same happened in the BBC Introducing tent on the Sunday afternoon, it was happily trundling along until the PP boys showed up to ‘do their thang’ and once again, filled the tent in no time at all, they really do have ‘the midas touch’ when it comes to getting people in the mood to P-A-R-T-Y!

The Autumn tour has taken them from Glastonbury to Guildford, Plymouth to London (where they sold out the Paper Dress Vintage venue) and from Southampton to Totnes where I was fortunate enough to be invited. After a heavy session of pie eating courtesy of ‘Pie Street’ in Totnes (the mushroom pies are to die for apparently), they were match fit, full and hopefully, raring to go!

Opening the evening were a local quartet called KOCAPOLI, this should have been a quintet but they were missing their drummer so proceeded to play their set ‘drummer-less’, asking the audience to stomp their feet whenever they did to create the effect that the drummer was actually with them helping to hold it all together!

There was something familiar about this band, I thought I’d seen them before and it wasn’t until after their set when I spoke to the singer that I realised that they were related to Emma Twamley who runs ‘Glas-Denbury’ Festival. The last time I saw the twins performing was in a small tent in a Denbury field where they were singing angelically whilst their brother strummed along on a guitar. Well, here they were again, singing very angelically whilst the brother strummed along and with the aid of a bass player, kicked out some fine tunes that kept the audience engaged until show time. One of their tracks struck a chord with me, I think it was called ‘Mango’ and it was something that one of their grandparents had said about enjoying life, eating the mango whilst the juice ran all over your face and fingers, I probably got the wrong end of the stick but either way, it sounded great and went down a storm.

The set was rounded and well-formed and sounded great, dare I say, a whole lot tighter than it did when I saw them perform years ago in the small tent at Glas-Denbury. Keep your eyes on their social media for more local shows as they’re definitely one to watch.

PATTERN PUSHER took to the stage and immediately transformed the Barrel House ballroom into a 70’s themed discotheque, complete with a spinning glitter ball which looked immense as it beamed light around the room. They played a fabulous blend of disco tinged bangers including ‘Tonight’ with its classic bass-line and whirly keys and a wonderful ballad called ‘Hey Dude’ which Alex dedicated to his father who sadly passed in the Summer, by the time the track came to an end, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room.

By the time they kicked into a wonderful cover of Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’, Ben G (bass) had gone AWOL, everyone knew he was in the room as he was playing along but nobody could quite work out where, moments later, he popped up on the bar and continued to play the rest of the song with the aid of the bar staff, keeping him vertical! The tracked segued into another cover of ‘Doorbell’ by The White Stripes and came to a close having put huge smiles on everyone’ s faces.

Another Girl’ was a new track which saw Ben G introducing slap bass to his repertoire, being a bass played myself, I know how difficult it is to pull this style of playing off and hats off to him, he did a FABULOUS job of it.

PATTERN PUSHER recently released their Sunrise EP, a collection of 5 tracks including ‘Happy Place, ‘Come Along’ and ‘Find The Light’ which combined, make up THE perfect party album, if you’ve not had the pleasure yet, head to their website (patternpusher.com) and get a CD ordered NOW, go on, do it, you can thank me later!

After the show, I spoke to Ben G once again and asked him about the release date for the album which was meant to be showing it’s head this year, he said that they were looking to put out another EP next year and hopefully, the album would follow sometime over the Summer so keep your eyes peeled and your ears open for more news as this lands.

In the meantime, head to Spotify to check out their new EP and then log onto their website and order the CD, you even get a free sticker, there truly is a god!

Words and Pictures by Steve Muscutt