DUNCAN PATTERSON's ALTERNATIVE 4 Signs With PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS

ALTERNATIVE 4, the brainchild of Duncan Patterson (ANATHEMA),has inked a deal with Prophecy Productions. The band's new album will be entitled "The Obscurants" and will probably be recorded in late 2012.

Patterson is an icon of melancholic alternative rock music. With his crucial songwriting role on ANATHEMA's "Eternity" and "Alternative 4", he freed the Liverpool doomsters of their tight metal corset, he founded the likewise renowned ANTIMATTER whose first albums he shaped significantly, and he explored ethereal melancholia on two ÍON albums thus far.

With the band name derived from the ANATHEMA album from 1998, the musical and atmospheric direction of ALTERNATIVE 4 is described in a press release as "a solid rock foundation enriched with painful piano and string arrangements, sometimes on the verge of ambient music, sometimes offering the big influence of the rather dark and abysmal side of PINK FLOYD." All this can already be witnessed on last year's debut album, "The Brink", and will now be continued with further album releases on Prophecy Productions.

Commented Patterson: "It's good to be back onboard a label who have always had respect for my work, regardless of how obscure or 'uncommercial' it often turns out. In today's musical climate, it is difficult to find a decent label who are genuinely focused more on the artistic/innovative side than anything else. For me that is essential as I've no plans to start playing and writing fashionable music as a career move, not unless I do it accidentally that is."