The Return of Patch & the Giant
New music out on Folkroom this spring!
They’re back!
Patch & the Giant have returned to Folkroom Records to share their new album, Fragments - available to pre-order now ahead of release on May 9th.
It’s been eight years since their acclaimed album, All That We Had We Stole, and twelve years since the band’s debut EP, The Boatswain’s Refuge, was released on a then-fledgling Folkroom Records. Now, we’re proud to come together again to bring you their most accomplished record to date.
Long-time followers of Folkroom will be more than familiar with the band, but here’s the rundown for anybody who has joined us since: way back in the early 2010s, just after I’d first launched our gigs in a small corridor pub in Kings Cross, I was invited to a Sunday afternoon show in the north of the city.
What I walked into was a sort of indie folk idyll. Four, maybe five bands were playing over the course of the day. An Irish singer-songwriter was in the beer garden warming up while people watched on from the picnic benches. The huge windows in the bar meant each set was bathed in warm summer light. Best of all, the organisers - also the headline act - were set up in the kitchen, where they’d knocked together a cheap chilli con carne that was available to punters for a few quid. It was Patch & the Giant’s monthly residency at The Boogaloo, and it was a reflection of everything I wanted for Folkroom, only with added mince dinners.
The band quickly became a mainstay of the early Folkroom community (as did every other act playing that afternoon), and for a while you were in with a good chance of spotting at least one member at any given Folkroom gig: sometimes as the full band (I believe at one point they had eight regular members), or frequently just watching from the audience, or playing individually as a backing band for another artist.1
Fragments is the next step in the evolution of a band that have been integral to grassroots folk music in London for over a decade now. I’m really proud to be able to bring them back to the Folkroom label for the release of the record. You, the listener, are in for a real treat. In Fragments, the band have delivered their most accomplished collection of songs to date - an album that offers a more mature, more refined take on the familiar Patch sound. It’s a record that’s been a long time in the making, but it’s also a record that has made the most of that time.
Produced by Folkroom’s very own Ben Walker, and mastered by long-time label collaborator Mike Hillier, Fragments feels like a classic Folkroom album reimagined for 2025. The band are the best they’ve ever been, their songwriting and their music as grand and moving as ever.
The album comes out on May 9th, but pre-order now to get your hands on a sneak peek. You’re going to absolutely love it.
- Stephen
Sophie Jamieson used to tour with two former members; Derek Yau featured on her Folkroom-released EP. Yau is also a member of fellow Folkroom alumnus The Lost Cavalry. Angie Rance frequently popped up as a one-woman brass section. Gabriel Merryfield was performing that first day in another band, The Moon, The Son and The Daughters.