Local Feature Album – Spice World

The image of a “purple patch” was immortalized by Roman poet, Horace. He used the flashy textile metaphor to describe (and warn against) using ornate passages in an otherwise plain piece of writing.

In modern parlance, meanwhile, the phrase usually refers to a time of unusual success or good fortune. Both meanings find their way, winkingly or otherwise, into describing the new record from Walyalup/Naarm-based yearners Spice World.

On Purple Patch, Spice World continue to prioritise an un-serious and sometimes unplanned approach to placing music on the permanent record.

Much of the album was recorded and mixed by Jeremy Segal in Fremantle the day after “There’s No “I” In Spice World” was released, just a few hours before the band was once again flung widely across the continent.

Other songs were learned and tracked in lounge rooms and bedrooms within a given afternoon. Venetian’s was written on the day of recording. The Price Isn’t Right features percussion played on a share house chandelier – the type of detail that mingles with clarinet, flute, piano and other surprising additions to fill out the record’s scruffy sense of DIY “ornateness.”

Spice World’s Lyndon Blue & Rhian Todhunter joined Breakfast’s Pam Poland, in the studio, to chat all things Purple Patch.