Category:People:Patrick Leagas

Patrick Leagas

 * https://www.discogs.com/artist/236542-Patrick-Leagas
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Leagas

Patrick Leagas is a British musician. Leagas was a founding member of Death In June. After leaving Death In June in 1985 during a tour in Italy, Leagas formed Sixth Comm in 1986 and began working under the name Patrick O-Kill. Leagas later met vocalist Amodali at a Liverpool club in 1989. The two collaborated extensively in the 1990s as Mother Destruction. Leagas has also since appeared live a few times at Death In June shows.

Biography
The following information was compiled from e-mail conversations with Patrick during 2006

Ironically and considering that Patrick's 6comm was perhaps the first artist ever to use the term' comm ' as a band name ,defining communication on all levels. He has consistently declined to use the world wide web to inform of his work, life and activities and also has not made his old works available for many years. The reclusive experimental artist is to make a return to music this year with the long awaited double album 'headless' and let the moon speak.

Patrick L has actively been involved in music since the 1977 when at the age of sixteen he started playing drums and percussion and various instruments in several punk and post punk experimental bands. His first studio release recorded in 1978/9, was a 7' vinyl EP by The Runners from 84 with his old school friend Richard Butler, who later also became a member of Death in June during the Nada period. The Runners can be described as a strange mixture of the Fall and Joy division and were quite experimental for the time ,using early synths, tape loops multi effected drums and bass. Probably unknown to many Tony Wakeford joined the Runners before the formation of Death in June,adding an extra and very distinctive dimension to the last moments of the Runners. Some Characteristics of early Death in June were evident in the Runners such as Patrick's militaristic drumming style on some songs, the use of military trumpets and the wearing of camouflage and masks. Patrick's ss decals upon a leather jacket and a belt buckle made from a WW2 steel plaque of Hitler's profile perhaps spelt of things to come. Though all of these things were later highly refined by all three members of DIJ.

In 1980 Patrick joined Douglas Pearce and Tony Wakeford, formally of the post punk band Crisis ,to form Death in June, after being given a demo cassette of early incarnations of 4 songs,one of which was Heaven street. Patrick added stark and aggressive mono rhythmic drums to the guitars and robotic vocal style of early DIJ and a unique sound was born. I have known Patrick for many years and had seen the Runnners live in Reading on a few occasions but at their first concert, Death in June , as support act for Nick cave and the bad seeds at the North London Poly 1981 created a new genre of sound and image, which literally had members of the audience stunned in an otherwise political correct trendy lefty world (i.e. in those days there were many real life Ric's from the young ones)

The strange static yet theatrical figures, Douglas and Tony wearing replica SA brown shirts, Patrick wearing an ss short Panzer jacket ,hammered forth a wall of sound that changed the evenings expected agenda and created another dynamic ,stealing a little of the night away from the headline act. As I remember and Patrick has told me, the TV company filming the evening asked DIJ to go back on stage so they could film them having not expected the support act to be worth while the trouble, DIJ uncompromising to the last moment declined the offer. Most other bands/ artists 'do not bite the hand' that feeds and would sell their souls for exposure on TV at their very first concert. This was to set the stance of Death in June,from this time on, they laughed in the face of the media.Despite this they consistently received great critical interest in the major music press at the time. That was my introduction to DIJ and I remained a fan until Brown book and the world that summer.

Patrick left Death in June after recording the Nada album and the Born again 12" with Douglas P in 1984. By that time Tony Wakeford had already departed, leaving just Douglas and Patrick as the backbone of the band., with collaborators R.Butler and David Tibet of Current 93.

Patrick departure has never been explained completely as I understand because there was no one reason why he wanted to leave DIJ. After Tony left, Patrick was taking an equal and lead roll with Doug as a writer of material and vocalist front of stage. I know that he was very unhappy with this, being a very shy person in normal life and certainly not happy with the attention they were now receiving from the media. There was also the image that was becoming difficult to maintain, which had caused him considerable trouble on many occasions in his personal life and relationships.

Yet above all I think that Patrick had to ,as Doug puts it...if my memory serves me correctly, "to live the reality of Death in June". For the next 5 years Patrick spent time exploring aspects of physical and mental endurance, influenced by such persons as Wilfred Thysiger , Gurjieff , Lawrence of Arabia and other more contemporary extra-ordinaries.

He joined, for a while, the reserve forces of the British army, spent months travelling and mountaineering in remote regions of the Western Sahara, Atlas mountains , Horn of Africa, Northern Pakistan. He made several short trips to Afghanistan in the latter stages of the war against against the Soviet forces who had invaded in 1980. He worked for aid agencies ,as a sound recordist for film units working in the region and its rumoured that he was involved in the fighting and saw action in Afghan mujurhadeen campaigns in the Panjushir. He had also travelled and photographed with Eritrean peoples liberation front during the guerilla war in Eithiopia /Somalia,some of his photographs saw publication in journals in Europe and the USA.

During this time Patrick had mainly been living in London and occasionally recorded music under the name Six comm or sixth comm. Though he never performed live (apart from one unannounced show) or made a serious effort to get his music to a wider audience. Nevertheless he gained a very strong and large underground audience between 1985 to 1989 having released 4 albums and several 12" singles, cassettes and picture discs . Due to the financial collapse of the main indie distribution companies in 1987 and again in 1990, Patrick's label amongst many others, suffered loses which caused the cancellation of several 6 comm albums which were never to be completed or released.at that time he also decided to end his musical output for a while This put an end to the first incarnation of Six comm. Some of the unreleased work from that era will soon be available in forthcoming releases.

1989 was to be a musical turning point in his life when he met artist-performer Amodali. Mother destruction came to life with an album entitled "Seething' very different musically from his previous work and showed his capacity to produce material outside of the expected restraints of the dark wave -gothic -industrial genre, something that Patrick never associated himself with in particular. I do not have much knowledge of Mother destruction and I suspect that there are other places on the web to investigate regarding.

Patrick and Amodali released 4 albums and other vinyl edition during 1990 to 2000 and also toured Europe several times from 1994 to 1999 .MD style of tribal -electronic magical dance was more successful live than on recordings, which is quite often the case for a lot of independent bands but I am told that neither Patrick nor Amodali wished to continue with MD after their last release and both persons disappeared totally from the music scene for the next 5 years.

So here we are back to the beginning, another turn of the wheel, return to the eternal recurrence. 6comm return after 16 years with new material, the first double album being a mix of old and the new but all unreleased before now. His music perhaps will not appeal to the purist's idea of how an ex Death in June artist should sound. I think that if you care to listen then some of you may be in for a surprise and I think that more than a little of the old Patrick is emerging in forthcoming material in 2007.

See also (other bands)

 * Runners from 1984
 * Death in June
 * Sixth_Comm
 * Mother Destruction
 * Concrete Temple