32 instruments are employed on this record. 32? To be honest it’s a tall order to name that many, let alone use them all on one album. However, when you consider that a Nutella jar and a door have been utilized somewhere along the way it’s not really a such difficult task. Suddenly any household object you can to mention has musical possibilities.There’s nothing as crazed as Matmos’ use of sound/items on Patrick Kellher’s album though (you know the kind of thing ”“ plastic surgery procedures, semen hitting paper, snail triggered lasers) and before too long you’re not concentrating on what instrument made what sound but simply on the ambience of each of these carefully constructed songs.Pieced together in a couple of home studios, You Look Cold is as lo-fi an album as you might expect from something that employs a chocolate spread jar as percussion. This is a record full of ideas that frequently head off in dizzying directions creating something of a feel of unease at times. Strangely, these ideas never clash heavily enough to give the impression that the album has been hastily pasted together with scotch tape and whatever software was available at the time.'Not Leaving Town' gets things underway in understated fashion. A thrum of electonics churns away like a washing machine on a never ending cycle and Kelleher drones his vocal over the top in a manner that suggests he’s taken a few lessons from a catatonic Bobby Gillespie.'Coat To Wear’s' simplistic 4 note motif is far more interesting, coming across like a heavily edited Mike Oldfield off-cut. From here, Kelleher layers up instrumentation and percussion with a steady hand, never laying it on too thickly and allowing his virtually spoken vocal room to become effective.'Wintertime’s Doll' takes us off in an entirely different direction. This time an electronic metronome beat stands guard as a basic blues pattern is slowly enveloped by a gang of marauding violins that gain a more psychotic edge as the track progresses. As the track closes, you rather suspect that 'Wintertime’s Doll' might just have been kept on the shelf somewhere in Norman Bates’ motel.Things are kept at a fairly leisurely pace which threatens to turn You Look Cold into a somewhat one dimensional effort at times, in spite of the abundant creativity on show. It’s not until 'He Has To Sleep Sometime' that we get something with a bit of urgency about it. That this urgency should come in the form of a song that sounds as if it has been exhumed from the 80s is in keeping with Kelleher’s tendency to shift across styles with apparent ease. It’s all simple keyboards, skittish drum machines, and determined singular bass and something of a welcome relief.The apparent need to constantly shift shape finds us later indulging in the curious casio doo-wop of 'Until I Get Paid', which appears to drift in and out of time frequently and challenges the listener to stick with it by allowing things to shift in to the regions of the off-key. Then there’s the low rent gothic lunacy of 'Blue Eyes' to take us into the darker corners of Kelleher’s imagination. His voice hidden under a veil of distortion, this is pleasingly creaky stab at being creepy, so much so it’s like a sonic version of Plan 9 From Outer Space. It’s also practically impossible not to fall in love with the escalating drum speed at the song’s conclusion; which sounds as if a younger relative snuck into the studio as he was recording and wedged their thumb firmly on the + key on the tempo setting.You Look Cold is an enjoyable album, but at times it slightly lacks in focus and probably only really hints at what Kelleher is capable of too. You sometimes wish he’d dispense with the wilfully out of tune instrumentation that graces the likes of the folky 'I Am Eustace', but it does at least add a human element to the album. It’s this willingness to leave mistakes in that distances him from other bedroom dabbling musicians. It’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with next as there’s clearly a great deal of potential here. 64%Patrick Kelleher on Myspace