The Patchy Skies - "Markings" 7"

The Patchy Skies – “Markings” 7”

Extra Small, 2006

Acquired: KJHK Music Staff, New, 2007

Price: $0

It’s absolutely amazing how much music gets made and recorded. Just unfathomable. So much so that sometimes music, like this 7” from San Franciscan all-girl lo-fi bedroom-pop trio The Patchy Skies sounds like white noise. The hooks are unremarkable, the recording muddled (almost assuredly by design), and it’s hard to differentiate this from any of the myriad quasi-punk lo-fi bands who operated in the mid-00s. This feels like a standard KJHK music staff review from that era. The gravel you dig through and occasionally stumble across a nugget of gold. There’s nothing wrong with gravel, it’s fine, even necessary, but ultimately I can’t even remember what these songs sound like five minutes after listening to them. The significance of The Patchy Skies is that they were the starting point for frontwoman Jess Scott for her next band Brilliant Colors, who released two Black Tambourine-y records on Black Tambourine’s label Slumberland (the ultimate purveyors of hazy throwback dreampop).

Here's the Brilliant Colors track "'Round Your Way." For the Patchy Skies, imagine this, but recorded in a dumpster.