Hatch Echo From Below: New Music from Hatch Vol. 1
Hatch, a DIY collective as well as venue, released their first (of hopefully very many) compilations in June, one which perfectly captures what’s so uniquely alluring about the sound they’ve cultivated.
The compilation is a pick-and-mix of 18 Hatch artists, all following their own particular vision of tracks they’d enjoy making. Everything Hatch produces is a passion project, the result of someone having almost too good a time.
If you’ve been to a gig at Hatch before you’ll probably know what I mean by the “Hatch sound”. But for those who haven’t yet, what makes this particular ecosystem of Sheffield creativity so richly sublime is that transporting – almost to the point of transcendental – and totally feral quality. Everything is rough round the edges, audibly DIY in a deeply gratifying way, and in compilation form at long last that visceral, organic feeling is only amplified.
But it’s more than that. It’s almost as if the sound they’ve keyed into grew up out of that unidentifiable fungal mass growing in your basement, like it’s a portal into a vaguely hellish and mossy fantasy landscape. There’s something warmly and greenly occult about the noise that is chaotic, undeniably fresh, and grittily satisfying. Highlights include Dearthworms’ ‘Cheetos Man’, Blanchard’s ‘The Blues Ain’t Blue’, and Slug Milk’s ‘Bogroll Snuffkin’, but really it’s a no-skipper all round.
