Patrick Wolf is 23 years old and he’s been refining his talents for more than half a lifetime. It all started 12 years ago when Wolf first experimented with car boot sale keyboards and tape recorders and has resulted in one of the most startlingly original and innovative voices now emerging in English pop music.
The roots of Wolf’s music embrace everything from PJ Harvey to Stockhausen and English folk music to the legendary jazz trumpet player and singer, Chet Baker. All this started, however, with a precocious obsession in early electronic music. Indeed, Wolf was barely into his teens when he built his first Theremin, one of the earliest fully electronic musical instruments invented in 1919 by Léon Theremin.
By the time he was 14, Wolf was performing with pop-art collective Minty. He also began writing and recording with an urgency that caught the attention of an independent label called Fat Cat Records who, recognizing Wolf’s extraordinary potential, gave him an Atari computer and a mixing desk, the tools that helped hone Wolf’s unique production and programming. Stumbling across his mother's Joni Mitchell records led to another insight into the art of songwriting.
Wolf left home at the age of 16 and spent the next few years making money from busking in a string quartet and forming a group called Maison Crimineaux, a noisy and rude duo that built its destructive ethics around white noise and pop music. Fate then interceded in Wolf’s life.
Maison Crimineaux were asked to perform in Paris, a show seen by Capitol K, the man who went on to release Wolf’s debut album, ‘Lycanthropy’. The album was a chronicle of Wolf's teenage triumphs and disasters. It was not just the songwriting that set his precocious talents apart - the lush tapestry of sounds were used to astonishing effect, with Wolf’s trademark violin and baritone ukelele joined by an electronic carpet of beats and bleeps.
‘Lycanthropy’ was released on a small independent label in the summer of 2003 and was met with enormous critical acclaim. Wolf was also making guest appearances as a viola player with Chicks on Speed and The Hidden Cameras. The Cologne-based label Tomlab picked up the album for America and Europe, the start of a relationship which was to lead to Wolf’s second album, ‘Wind in the Wires’, released at the start of 2005.
While ‘Lycanthropy’ was being recorded, Wolf took a year to study composition at the Trinity College music conservatoire in London’s Greenwich, the fruits of which can be heard on ‘Wind in the Wires’, an album that received even more applause than his debut recording.
Wolf toured extensively in the UK and throughout Europe. Among his biggest fans were Bloc Party, who invited Wolf to tour with them on their 2005 autumn tour. The year culminated with Wolf’s own sell-out show at London’s Scala and his first major record deal with the Loog label.
He spent the winter recording the album in both Vienna and London, briefly previewing his new songs at a concert – called simply An Evening with Patrick Wolf – at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre in March 2006.
The new album, ‘The Magic Position’, was finished at the end of June and will be released on the 26th February 2007. The album was written, produced and arranged by Wolf and features guest performances by Marianne Faithfull and Edward Larrikin from Larrikin Love as well as contributions from, among others, members of the Symphony Orchestra of Vienna.