January 2005:

PASSING BY review by Mike Bond for www.ukmusicsearch.com:

"Building on a collage of middle-eastern strings, gentle guitar strums and vocal limbering up - SCENE IN THE PARK is a song that continually surprises. Refreshingly free of the usual singer/songwriting constraints of verse-chorus-verse, this is a sprawling, beautiful mess of emotionally wrought vocals and free jazz influenced saxophone stabs that flow together into one glorious free roaming whole. Patrick's vocals are delivered in a style that's part Jeff Buckley, part Thom Yorke, and with a slice of the more folkier leanings of someone like Richard Thompson thrown in for good measure - although still retaining enough raw originality to distance himself as a unique artist. The music, similarly has that same uniqueness to it, there are hints of Radiohead's Paranoid Android or even early Genesis, but they're influences that only scratch the surface with Patrick McKeowns songs proving to be sonically adventurous in their own right.

The folky acoustic fingerpicking of VANISHING MAGICIAN heralds another musical adventure. Changing time signatures catch you by surprise, as Patricks vocals weave in and out of the classy guitar and take you in unusual directions, morphing from chilled out folk to operatic falsetto with unnerving ease.

SCATHING SONG, takes a much simpler route as a gentle acoustic guitar is picked against the quietly menacing vocals, the dark lyricism acting as the magnetic centrepiece and replacing the avant-garde free jazz complexities of the two former songs.

Patrick McKeown is an artist who almost defies categorisation, the songs here proving him a unique singer/songwriter. You can spot the odd influence here and there, a touch of Radiohead, a bit of John Coltrane, a slice of Jeff Buckley, but on the whole this is a refreshingly unique set of songs that suggest the arrival of an extremely exciting talent."