STRANGE RAIN, like BLUE NIGHT, features entirely electronic music. Unlike BLUE NIGHT, with its mainly acoustic-like instrumental sounds, STRANGE RAIN is much more an"electronic" adventure, and is both a departure, and a return to earlier explorations.
Spinning opens the album with fluid rhythms and melodies as it shifts and flows through multiple episodes, and leads to the dream-like Strange Rain, which was created from processed vocal sounds layered with synth washes. Next isWhispers, a slow incantation for solo synth flute and drones. These first three pieces form a 17 minute long suite of other-worldly space music, incorporating trance and drone elements, with detailed textures and the classically influenced sense of melody and structure typical of Patrick's music.
Spring changes the mood with a rapidly whirling burst of bells, flutes and hammer dulcimer samples, and introduces And Did Those Feet?, the title of which is taken from the first line of William Blake's poem Jerusalem. Built over a loopy hammer dulcimer pattern this piece features ecstatic solos using the sounds of pan drums, and flute.
Black Moon also uses trance movements, with bell sounds underpinning brass and woodwind melodies, and a deep and ever shifting watery background texture, creating a mood at once medieval yet futuristic.
Patrick is also well known as a composer of music for animations, and the next section of STRANGE RAIN features a selection of miniatures influenced by this work.
First is the peculiar reggae-esque Wobblebirds, then the entirely silly Snoke, which may be taking place inside the skull of a witless dupe, and Slammit, which features a rhythmic groove of slamming doors coupled with unlikely harpsichord filigree.
Monkshood, with its eerie manipulated voices, Dark Train 's claustrophobic whirrs and clatters, and the buzzing bugs and wonky 15/7 drum beat of Zuttze form a moody soundscape.
Next is Holes In My Socks, a brief rocker for two pianos which sets up the angular, eccentric pyrotechnics of Angry Hobbits, for electric bass, bassoon, mutant vacuum-cleaner and mallets.
The album concludes with Cedar Wind, a peaceful meditation on the passage of time and loss, featuring slowly unwinding melodies for voice and woodwind sounds. It starts with the wind rising in the forest, and ends with the breathing of unknown and invisible worlds.