Political slot

Some thoughts. Many in politics and the media would seek to highlight our differences and capitalise on some of our lowest instincts, in order to deflect attention from inequity caused by those at the top. "Look at those people, they get a couple of pounds more in benefits than you get in your minimum wage job! It's so unfair!" The demand is to strip people, who are also down the bottom end, of their benefits, instead of forcing the bosses to pay a higher wage. If it's not people on benefits causing ire, it's fellow workers. "Look at those immigrants, coming over here, sweeping our streets, making our sandwiches...". If people in the UK don't want to do jobs like sandwich-making for pittance pay, and people from Hungary are happy to do those jobs because the pay is relatively good for them, perhaps the government should step in and cajole business owners into making working conditions better so that they can attract local workers? Ah, but they don't want to do that, because of the free market orthodoxy. Well if British firms like Greencore can't provide living wage jobs making sandwiches, come up with some other areas where decent jobs can be created. Like the medical profession. "I can't see my GP because of all these foreigners". Not quite - you can't see your GP because infrastructure in your area is lacking, and/or doctors don't want to practice in your area. Can you force people to train as doctors, and then to use that training in your local area? I didn't want to be on the medical front line, these are hard jobs requiring a good analytical brain and faith in one's decision-making abilities. Of course there aren't enough doctors. There aren't enough of most good things. "I can't get a council house because of all these foreigners". No - there are more single-person households nowadays, more luxury flats aimed at the wealthy (while these companies have no incentive to create affordable housing, because of the free market orthodoxy), and less council house stock across the country because the Tories encouraged people to buy their council houses, and many councils don't want to look after their remaining stock. Pointless to blame the people trying to get a house. Blame the people who ensured there wouldn't be enough houses left to go around.

It seems so obvious that the sensible answer to most people's concerns is to devolve more decisions to the local level, acting on concerns of infrastructure, overcrowding, encouraging the building of enough GP surgeries, hospitals, schools, council houses, fire stations, all the things we consider necessary for a well-functioning society. Not focusing on pulling up the drawbridge. Ensuring that locally there are enough nurses, enough consultants, enough teachers, enough police, enough social workers. Encouraging interest in medicine, advocacy, ethical jobs from a young age; making it attractive to join these professions.

You want more UK-based jobs to replace all the factory ones that have been outsourced? Stop importing energy. Put more money into British renewable energy, kick-start the economy and ensure energy security at the same time. Our governments seem determined to erode energy security, and to make anything that's nationalised pay over the odds.

A Labour politician on Channel 4 News recently tried to justify the Labour-encouraged glut of PFI contracts that led to hospitals and schools being saddled with far higher long-term bills than if they'd just paid for the work upfront themselves. (The private partners walk away with all of the profits and none of the risk.) His comeback? "Well, you ask those patients who've been treated in PFI hospitals whether they're happy those hospitals exist". And nothing more. For crying out loud - if not for PFI, many more hospitals would exist, would be in good shape, well-equipped without crippling debts, and the only losers would have been the private companies.

Most people who claim to be for a free market don't actually believe in it. What they want is a rigged market, ensuring public loses out to private, the risks are cushioned by those at the bottom, and the profits stay at the top. This is profoundly unfair. I don't believe in the free market either; but I'd love to see a fair market.

It was twenty years ago today

Wednesday 21st November 1994 saw the birth of Keshco, in a grubby music room in a windy East Anglian town. Here's Robert:

"Never afraid to try things out. Never a dull moment involving tiny synths, lettuce sandwiches, radio sessions, busking by the Thames, sweetcorn, jamming fast on behalf of Scope at the Virgin London Triathlon 2013, exceedingly daft costumes, bad venues, bad head colds, far too much glitter, 2 near death experiences, and a very short tour by Megabus! "Was it all worth?" Bloody hell.. "Yes, It was a worthwhile experience!" Like the FB page today! We've most definitely paid our taxes!"

It's fair to say at the time it started, we had no idea we'd still be cavorting about under the same name in 2014, partially because if we had we'd have chosen something a little less obtuse and easily mistyped. (Bargain Bag was, I think, an alternative.) Also at that time, we had no idea about the vending machine repair, the life skills coaching, the tractor parts, the Irish connection, or even the fitness gear. It certainly is a very open-ended name. But it looks nice when drawn, so that helps; also when hollered with the emphasis on "Cohhhhh".

Official Bob Art Models logo for the 20th anniversary

A very happy anniversary to Keshcologists one and all. Firecracker gumdrops all round. Come and join us via your screen of choice, on our Ustream channel this Sunday night, from 9pm UK-time: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/beware-vision

Meanwhile, our next project is Volume 1 of our instrumental Film-maker's Reference Kit, providing time-starved and cash-poor editors the world over with fresh beats, tunes, idents, and backing pads; and also soundtracks to your own personal movies. Filthy. It's midway through trimming now, so expect that out in good time for Christmas.

Other things you can buy for Christmas: autobiographies by Stephen Fry (which Amazon reviews have dissuaded me from hunting down just yet), John Cleese (which Amazon reviews have cooled me from immediately pursuing), Paul Merton (which in the US is called "The Long And Short Of It" - "Only When I Laugh" doesn't resonate there?); diaries by Michael Palin (I'm looking for a replacement travel bag in the Palin style, ideally one that won't chafe my tender neck, though that might as much be a fault of over-packing my current threadbare Kickers bag, as bad design); musings by Dave Gorman (feeding OCD for over a decade); the first series of Bridget Christie Minds The Gap (just say no to patriarchal snacks).

Live from London, to your screen of choice

Concert-watchers may be interested to hear that the next Keshco performance is on Sunday 23rd November, from 9pm UK-time, to be streamed via our Ustream channel:
www.ustream.tv/channel/beware-vision

I have noticed a quirk of Ustream, in that laptop/desktop viewers will have their streams periodically interrupted by annoying adverts. However, if you tune in using your mobile, you can watch ad-free. The same is true if you use the app on your Smart TV, e.g. one of the Panasonic Viera range.

If you have any requests for favourite tunes, let us know in the comments.

Meanwhile, deserving of further mention is this clip on Vimeo of the HK protests, backed by "Like Home":

Umbrella HK @Causeway Bay 1.Oct.2014 from Laurence Tong on Vimeo.

Bob Art Models in Todmorden

Come and see one of Keshco's left-handers exhibiting his artwork in Yorkshire:

John Cooper Clarke and Tommy Cooper.

Bob Art Models
October 13th - November 9th 2014
Admission: Free
Kava Kafe, 53 Halifax Rd, Todmorden, OL14 5BB

http://kavakafe.co.uk

Mick Fleetwood.

Many of Bob's images are portraits of comedic, musical and cultural icons such as Kenneth Williams, Mick Fleetwood, Tony Benn and Mary Berry (follow the Amazon links to learn about them, and potentially we could earn pennies! Who needs to sell music?).

Meanwhile, here's a haiku:

Cold digital pain
Antisocial media
Zip across the brain

Cassettes on Bandcamp

Our two CSD releases are now available for you to buy, via our Bandcamp page:

https://keshco.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-the-middle-room

https://keshco.bandcamp.com/album/freaks-at-a-wake

And... here's a haiku:

Playback is engaged
Out flood waves of mind comfort
Sonic spine capsule

Silly Spooling

So, did you get to a music store on Saturday, and perhaps spot one or other of our releases for Cassette Store Day? I imagine that's the last year we'll be able to be involved - total orders from the US list were a mighty one, the UK/EU list faring better with four open-minded stores taking our tapes. Looking at the list of releases, you can see why - several biggish-name labels and bands had got on the bandwagon this time and naturally most of the promo had gone to them. If Rough Trade and Domino are involved, it's no longer alternative. Amusingly, our local record shop flat refused to stock our music ("we've already bought our stock for CSD" - yes but we're walking-distance and offering it sale or return for flip's sake) - and what were they selling instead? Several NME-approved releases much pricier than our own. If the NME are involved, it's no longer alternative.

Some of us never stopped using cassettes, so please don't count us amongst hipsters. It's hard enough to get anybody to purchase any physical product these days, especially if you avoid traditional label/management/promotion structures and strictures; and it is cheaper to produce a run of cassettes than a run of CDs. (Don't even mention vinyl - massively overpriced.)

Cassette Store Day

These two are on sale from this Saturday, 27th September, as part of the second international Cassette Store Day:

These releases (on the Keshcology label) are available from several retail outlets including Pebble Records (Eastbourne, England), The Inkwell (York, England), VOD Music (Mold, Wales), Insula Music (Copenhagen, Denmark), Burger Records (Fullerton, US). Why not ask Rough Trade if they're getting any independent music in?

The dream shall never die

Well that was frustrating news to wake up to. So close. All over Scotland, more than 4 out of 10 wanted independence - if this was a jury, it'd necessitate a re-trial.

Despite the high (for apathetic UK anyway) voting turnout of 84%, I suspect that, as with so many campaigns, too many yes supporters couldn't be bothered enough to vote, leading to the eventual 55%/45% split. Voter registration was 97%, so that's 13% who didn't get it together to have their say. Much better than the baffling failure of the AV referendum, but remember - Tories will always turn out to vote, so you can't leave anything to chance.

Still, it was a pretty close result and by no means could Westminster be satisfied with the margin. The no vote was generally in spite of Westminster, more a vote of fear of the unknown. You note how this morning Cameron slipped into his speech "settled for a generation, perhaps for a lifetime" - really? Really? Presuming there's another vote in another 15-odd years time, the younger yes will surely outstrip the older no.

A good summing-up of the new challenge was made by Phillip Blond from ResPublica (some kind of think-tank). The two options on offer - an increase in Scottish devolution and the ruddy West Lothian question - are contradictory impulses - MPs are kept in line by party whips, so banning the Scots ones from English issues and vice versa merely serves to tighten the grip of Westminster. Better just to devolve everywhere, and energise the whole nation - the Cornish, the Welsh, the North-East, Manchester, Liverpool, the Midlands et al; even the sodden Fens; and in the process the West Lothian nonsense will dissolve because we'll all take more responsibility at a local level.

On the night, it was fun to see McGlashan again, caricature though he is. Catch up with his previous adventures in the cackle-tastic and surprisingly sprightly Absolutely Everything DVD box set (via Amazon UK or Amazon US).

Tape update

With Cassette Store Day coming up on September 27th in several countries around the world, I'm amused to tell you that we've already taken more orders for our two cassette releases than we have for the Now CD project, presumably because the tapes were professionally duplicated and our releases are included on the official cassette store stock list. If you want a copy of "Freaks At A Wake", in particular, you'd best be quick. "Music From The Middle Room" is a larger run, so you can be quick for a longer period. After the day, any unsold stock will go up on our Bandcamp site.

Happily, I've printed the sleeves/labels myself too and they don't let the side down.

A haiku:

Incremental shift

Ruins half a page by stealth

Sodding tape labels

The Avery template for cassette labels (7655) does not work properly on Word 2010 (there is an irremovable blank area at the top of the first row), so I had to make my own.

Another:

Magnetic music

Signals spun and strung twixt spools

Polarised domains

Yes, tapes are nice, but not a kigo in sight. And have a haiku couplet:

I like haiku, more than it likes me. It's a fine length for ADD.

Five bands who have influenced us

The question of influences is particularly thorny in this band, particularly for those listeners who (believe they) like their bands to stick to the same style. We tend to confuse the majority. If Depeche Mode are on our list, then you can be sure the DM fan will hear a folk song and switch off. If Billy Bragg is on our list, then by God the first song had better be a solo electric guitar and bald lyrics about the miners, or they'll switch off. If the Bonzos are on our list, the Doo-Dah fan will find two songs in a row that aren't humorous, and then switch off. Et cetera. It's like the ZX Spectrum tunnel-visioners who follow our Twitter feed when we mention the computer, only to run away as soon as we mention anything not computer-related. I like to think of this process as sifting through the general mass of people to find only the really free and open ones (and congratulations on your excessively eclectic taste if you do consider yourself a fan of ours), but how can you tell when people are so quiet? And which influences really are the most important?

Over the years, our conception of who we want to sound like, and who we actually sound like, has mutated constantly. I'm going to list five of the bands who I think make good lines of fit across the scatterplot of Kesh.

The Cure
Here's a band who started off down a particular lo-fi path and, as their tastes and ability broadened, so the music went through a series of Wild Mood Swings, not only the happysad that encompasses the rushing highs and crushing lows, but a teetering between sunny anthropomorphic fantasy and harsh hooded-wept reality, and a gamut of instrumental styles, about the only unifying features being heavy use of chorus/delay pedals, and Robert Smith's vocals, which themselves skitter between anguished howls and playful hoop-las. They were a big influence on our live goth-pop sound circa 2000. It seems since around that time they've reined in and settled into a downbeat rockier mode. I get a little sad at the contempt Robert Smith seems to have for some of his own pop tunes, as if he feels he has to write stupid in order to get a chart hit - whilst many bands know that feeling, it doesn't make the songs pointless - you have to just try and get better at making what you want to play and say become irresistible to the masses. Of course if someone sings an upbeat song with contempt, what are the audience supposed to feel? We've felt this on stage when performing certain songs that have lost their lustre for us - better to sing a sad song with relish than an obligatory happy number.

Sparks
Super chamber-pop duo Russell Mael (the one with the mass of curly hair) and Ron Mael (the one with the moustache) have spent 40 years searing through styles (glam, disco, indie dance) and often left their fans trailing behind, a major upswing in their fortunes coinciding with 2002's Li'l Beethoven, which instead of beats features masses of vocals keeping up the rhythm. Their live setup with its sampled beats and comedy moments was inspiring to us when looking for ways of performing 2-man gigs around 2004/5. Their waspish wit and effervescent melodies are always something to aspire towards.

Stereo Total
The live inspiration around that time also came from Stereo Total (e.g. the Musique Automatique album), although whilst Sparks are precise, Stereo Total value the happy accidents of scuffed chords, malfunctioning electronics and strained vocal leaps. The duo of Francoise Cactus and Brezel Goring play high-tempo garage-electro-rockabilly-chanson-punk with playful lyrics in several languages, which lead to their own happy lyrical accidents. Watching the obvious fun they were having reminded us that music made fast can have a great compulsive energy.

Os Mutantes
This choice perhaps says more about where we are headed; but the free and easy collaged sounds of Os Mutantes (the Brazilian Beatles?) have excited and subliminally influenced us for many years, their homemade guitar pedals distinctly pushing us towards the circuit-bent route, and I note how they keep their scathing satires uptempo and fun, with those fresh bossa nova chords and infectious melodies. Make 'em dance, make 'em think, make 'em resist. I can only imagine how much better it might sound if I understood Portuguese rather than relying on translations.

Duran Duran
Seriously, work with me on this. Four or five immensely fashionable young men with a line in innovative electronics, sci-fi dystopian lyrics, great rhythms... catalogue model good looks, champagne lifestyle... vocals that crack during important gigs... a couple of people leave and we get our own Nile Rodgers super-counter-melodist to compensate... a name taken from Barbarella (now you're just making it up. Ed). Oh have it your own way.

Symbols of identity

Along the information superhighway we trundle. Today I have some favicons for you. Favicons are the little icons you see at the top of your web program, in the tab next to the title. Here's our new www.keshco.co.uk favicon:

On the old version of the Kesh site, it was this:

Which do you prefer? Is it wrong to focus on the trolley symbol; will it further confuse music seekers?

With luck you can see the one at the top of this blog, which makes our purpose a bit clearer:

Would you like to design us an alternative one for Sunday best? (We'll pay in muesli.) Or, would you like us to design one for you? Yes, your site can have one too, perhaps created at www.favicon.cc.

The new Bleak House site - www.bleakhouse.eu - has a favicon, too:

What are your favourite favicons? To me they bring back the fun of the Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit (where the resulting game was pretty fixed and samey, but the great excitement came in the sprite design), or before that the Character Generator program on Horizons, the ZX Spectrum introductory cassette. Small is beautiful, working within restriction to create an impression of something with the minimum of signifiers.

Talking of small, beautiful things creating an impression of something, let's take a radical left turn, with a guest poet. Old Keshcologist Andrew Walton from Clydebank has two neat collections of poetry: Little Red Poetry and, most recently, Little Green Poetry. He recorded an episode of Poetry Hallway for our uStream channel in Autumn 2013. Here is one of his current political verses, which I like a lot.

Little Scotland

The Celtic knot, a twin S.

Adorned Ravenscraig’s gate.

Long empty, the husk. Silent, brooding,

Still casts a shadow.

Where there was industry,

Let us bring job seekers’ allowance.

Where there was militancy,

Let us bring sad resignation.

Steel-town of rusted girders,

Work transplanted wholesale.

Puerile promise of prosperity,

Evaporated,

Like the last dregs

In a once-proud steel can,

Our other national drink

Now lies crumpled

Beside  a torn up

Slip. A frustrated bet

On a winded nag which failed to

Deliver. A ballot

Thrown on the ground

To the skirl of pipes.

A cross beside “YES”,

A faded pencil saltire.

A broken outpost, aside from the battle

Where Sheridan tours,

Denounces the rule of capital

In stentorian tones.

Words echo around halls from

Alloa to Inverness.

They cannot carry

To far-off Northamptonshire.

Notes: Tens of thousands of workers from Scotland came to Corby, Northamptonshire in the 1930s and 1960s, on the promise of jobs in the steel industry. Thatcher destroyed much of the manufacturing industry in Britain, and British Steel was privatised – the jobs have long-gone. The town recently had a mock-referendum on Scottish Independence during the town’s Highland Gathering. Unlike the Yes campaign in Scotland, which is gathering momentum, the town voted No. Might this reflect a general mood of bitterness, anger and resignation to fate?

State of the art in 2014

Thanks for coming by! Our next releases are two cassettes - yes, audio cassettes - for Cassette Store Day, which is taking place on September 27 in the UK, US and several other nations. These releases are 100 copies of "Music From The Middle Room", under our other moniker of Bleak House...

...and 25 copies of "Freaks At A Wake", backed with its squalling tumbling Monotron remix on the reverse.

 
These will be available from your cassette retailer of choice (including Burger Records in the USA, Pebble Records in England and VOD Music in Wales) from September 27th, and if we have any left we'll sell them too, on our wildly successful Bandcamp page, afterwards.

There's a lot of interesting-looking material coming out for this event, doubtless a few releases from hipsters, but much of it from obscure home-recording types who need all the support they can get. Of course, you may find you now need something to play all these new cassettes on, like I did recently when my trusty Sony HCD-RXD5 finally became unresponsive on both tape decks, after 14 years of service. Ruddy electronics - for years, the CD play button has triggered the FM radio. Or perhaps the belt's simultaneously gone on both sides. It was originally bought, along with a MiniDisc recorder, as part of an earlier attempt to upgrade my audio facilities and get some relatively clean recording/copying equipment (compared to cheap-bottom Alba stereos and the Spinney Tronic).

Now then, dear Kesh-chum. We relish the freedom of working outside label/management structures, allowing us to follow whatever whims we like and put the results out directly to you, dear reader. However, we don't make money from it. Now, one of our most-visited net presences is at the Free Music Archive, where we have a page...

Keshco at the Free Music Archive

From there you can see that our recent EPs have been downloaded many thousands of times - Accountants By Day alone is now over 100,000 downloads. It's great that so many people have shared in our music, which is shared under Creative Commons licensing.

On the top right hand corner of the page at the FMA, there's a box with a dollar ($) symbol, saying "Tip The Artist". We're still looking for ways of making this free music idea work financially, and micropayments seem a good way to go. You can click on the tip box (here's our FMA link again), and then via Paypal, donate anything you wish, as little as $0.01 if you feel like it, towards our past and future music-making. Yes, $0.01. That's not an insulting amount and you shouldn't be deterred - it's a valued micropayment. If we get enough little tips, we can put the money towards something useful, like monitor speakers or better mics, or just towards the rent. It also gives us that warm, fuzzy feeling that people appreciate what we've put out.

Imagine if footballers made their cash in micropayments.

Of our other net presences, Reverbnation recently bit the dust. Poor Reverbnation. It was a pointless exercise really. All those tools to gather listener data and nobody listening. Like having a flashy shopfront in a no-go area of town. You could reach the top 10 for your area just by a couple of people clicking onto the page.

All the best now x

PS: If you, like us, are skint, you may appreciate the wise words of Alvin Hall, in Your Money or Your Life: A Practical Guide to Getting - and Staying - on Top of Your Finances which has been recently updated (Amazon UK and Amazon US affiliate links - oh go on, every little helps). It's a useful book, particularly for those who are perennially close-to-the-wire but can't work out why because they obviously aren't wasting money or overbuying... think again. Think everything over again, keep your receipts, and write it all down.

Now that's what I call some physical copies

So, with the supply chain now functioning and everything under control, please consider getting a copy of our Nowkesh CDs from our Bandcamp page. (Or you can still download the whole thing for free.) Here's the track listing again:

Track name and original artiste

1 You Can't Hurry Love	Phil Collins
2 Is There Something I Should Know	Duran Duran
3 Red Red Wine	UB40
4 Only For Love	Limahl
5 Temptation	Heaven 17
6 Give It Up	KC And The Sunshine Band
7 Double Dutch	Malcolm McLaren
8 Total Eclipse Of The Heart	Bonnie Tyler
9 Karma Chameleon	Culture Club
10 The Safety Dance	Men Without Hats
11 Too Shy	Kajagoogoo
12 Moonlight Shadow	Mike Oldfield
13 Down Under	Men At Work
14 (Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew	Rock Steady Crew
15 Baby Jane	Rod Stewart
16 Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)	Paul Young
17 Candy Girl	New Edition
18 Big Apple	Kajagoogoo
19 Let's Stay Together	Tina Turner
20 (Keep Feeling) Fascination	The Human League
21 New Song	Howard Jones
22 Please Don't Make Me Cry	UB40
23 Tonight, I Celebrate My Love	Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack
24 They Don't Know	Tracey Ullman
25 Kissing With Confidence	Will Powers
26 That's All	Genesis
27 The Love Cats	The Cure
28 Waterfront	Simple Minds
29 The Sun And The Rain	Madness
30 Victims	Culture Club

...and here's what the whole thing looks like:

Or, you may prefer the 1983 version (ours is a snip in comparison!)

George Weah's cousin

Our World of Football 14 EP (a free download on Bandcamp, though you can donate some pennies if you like) features a track about that great 90s footballer, Ali Dia. Here is the entry from Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics that informed the lyrics (it's full of inaccuracies, but we get the gist from it - I would advise reading the Wiki and other pages, like this on The Football Supernova, for context):

Dia, Ali (1968- ), footballer and impostor. Dia was an enthusiastic, but unskilful, part-time footballer whom Barry Jackson, the manager of Blyth Spartan - a club in the lower leagues - was happy to release after a few games. Some months later Jackson was surprised to see Dia playing in a Premiership game televised on Match of the Day. Ali Dia's moment of glory came after Graeme Souness, the manager of Southampton Football Club, apparently received a telephone call from George Weah, the Liberian international and former Footballer of the Year. Souness would be well advised, said Weah, to take a look at Dia, whom he described as a Senegalese international of outstanding talent, now living in England. The phone call was followed by one apparently from the French international, David Ginola, who seconded this advice. Weah and Ginola were not people to disregard, so Souness engaged Dia without a trial and played him against Manchester United. He missed an open goal and was otherwise careful not to get too involved, so Souness substituted him after 20 minutes. At the end of the season Souness let him go. Dia then joined Gravesend, another club in the lower leagues, turning out twice in the reserves before being released again. It was then discovered that he was a mature student taking a course in business studies at Newcastle University, but he continued to deny that he had impersonated Weah and Ginola on the telephone to Graeme Souness.

  'At least he played in the Premiership,' said his former manager at Blyth Spartan, 'which is more than I ever did.'

(Note: Ali Dia ended up not at Gravesend but Gateshead, as this article explains)

Freaks At A Wake: liner notes

In 2012/13, Keshco released a soundtrack EP entitled "Freaks At A Wake". Twice. Why?

Let's duck back a couple of years, because that's where the trail starts. In September 2010, we still had a Farfisa organ upstairs. This was before an ill-advised attempt to correct its one-tone dip, which resulted in the thing going pop (instead of producing pop), and being dismantled. But all that is for another painful release. "Freaks At A Wake" is the only complete Keshco piece to feature the thing. It's an improvised 26-minute piece which started with Robert behind both organ and another keyboard, and me balancing a guillotine on a snare drum, with a toy steering wheel and Dynamike at close quarters. The various sections overflow with hummable chordal melodies mainly thanks to Robert's neat fingerwork. The thing then sat on my multitracker for over a year, before the augmenting began - Robert's full drum kit for energetic fills and general beefing-up; Luke adding more layers of keys, flute and some fizzy-crackly lapsteel; and finally my careful doubling up of the various melody lines on acoustic guitar. That part took an awful lot of rewinding and cueing up.

A few sections on Freaks are almost pop (yes, in the chart sense), and indeed the middle section, "Tyre Dirt", has been singled out for video treatment. Really though, we'd like to film the whole thing, and we have an idea but not the time. So it'll have to wait. One film-maker, Dania Hany, has used the opening section for an inventive little piece: https://vimeo.com/91093694

Some of our sonic experiments are beyond the tastes of most mortals. That's understandable. We thought we'd test you by releasing one. Bob bought a Korg Monotron (fabulous little piece of kit) and discovered how much fun could be had routing a song into the Monotron via the microphone connection, and mixing the results through the little keyboard. Freaks seemed the perfect vehicle for a long-form exploration of this. The results are very crunchy, with a lot of harsh blips and squeaks, and most defiantly not easy listening. That said, if you stop listening after the first three minutes, you are most definitely a puny specimen and would never cope with something by, say, Signorina Alos (one of our new label-mates). Sit through the whole of Freaks and earn your stripes before moving onto harder fare.

Download and consume both of the Freaks, here:
http://www.panyrosasdiscos.net/pyr082-keshco-freaks-at-a-wake/
http://amp-recs.com/amp/amp126.html

A limited release of both versions on tape (UK £5) for Cassette Store Day 2014 is forthcoming.

Or, you may prefer some other Freaks (of the 1932 variety, and yes that is an affiliate link, meaning you can help us earn money by visiting Amazon via it - could this be our tip to the top at last?).

Now that's what I call some booklets

Something which cheered me up today:

...and how do you get your hands on one of these? How indeed! I can only direct you to our Bandcamp page and ask for patience.

Never mind the width, feel the quality

Here's a choice tune from our double CD, "Now That's What I Call Keshco", hopeful of proving that Side 4 is as interesting as Side 1, and that you should forget the originals when listening to our re-imaginings:


It's available for download with no minimum price - yes, you can grab the whole thirty tracks for free if you want, as an album or individually, and maybe that's the best way to listen, shuffling away on your iPod or performing ringtone duties on your mobile. Who knows - one of the songs might have some personal resonance and you may wish to share with friends via email or whatever social hell site you use.

However, the limited two CD set features quite a bit of artwork, and you get smouldering shots such as this:

Ladies, grab one now!

Meanwhile...

The original Now 1 is available from Amazon UK, naturally, and is far less economical.

Keshco's Now is out Now

Our 30-track tribute to the original 1983 compilation is available here: http://keshco.bandcamp.com/

As usual, please treat track 30 as importantly as track 1; some of the songs you're not originally familiar with may be the more interesting ones to click on; it's not all comedy songs; it's not all synthesized; it's not all folk; listening to the start of a song does not necessarily indicate how it ends; if you like any of it at all please comment, share and give us the faith to do more silly time-consuming projects like this.

Open your ears and your heart, and enjoy the free sound of Keshco, otherwise known as Bleak House, whose future regenerations may be many - but we promise we'll never become anything you'd hear on Radio 1.

Our previous releases have attempted (mostly failed) to bring together listeners of netlabels such as WM Recordings (Netherlands), 23 Seconds (Sweden), Silent Flow (Moldova), 4-4-2 Music (Australia), A.M.P-Recs (Mexico) and Pan y Rosas (United States). There's a lot of interesting sounds out there.

Anyway, now you've read about our version, why not check out the original? It's here on Amazon UK for 100% more money than ours.

Now That's What I Call Imminent

Our new album, and new website, are imminent. Firstly, here is a preview track from our 30-track tribute to the original Now That's What I Call Music album (released in this month thirty years ago):

"That's All" turns up midway through Side Four, which is on Disc Two.

Here are a couple of drawings courtesy of Robert. See if you can work out which tracks they relate to:

Here are some things to watch and listen

Hello there,

On 19th October 2013 we returned to London's Resonance FM, making our third appearance on the Hello Goodbye Show hosted by Dexter Bentley. Our previous shows were in February 2008 and December 2010. Andy had the norovirus thanks to his workplace, but Bob and Luke steered him onto the Tube and the performance was able to proceed. Richard and co made us feel very welcome. You can now see the video footage of that performance, here:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EWOnKPIQ2k)

Marvel at how Bob gets sounds from an even tinier kit, Luke turns his slide into a chaos of tweeting birds during Wafternoon, and at the live mixing during Top Deck.

A few weeks earlier, on 22nd September, we'd performed in a Sunday afternoon slot at London's Hidden River Festival, inside an empty dark big top (though it was being pumped around to the roughly 500 people on site). You can watch/hear that too:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpbsfH0eBMI)

Meanwhile, our uStream channel Beware! Vision is getting into gear, and on Sunday 20th October we broadcast a poetry show featuring Socialist humorous wordsmith Andrew Walton, whose entertaining and strident blog is here. You can watch the show on catch-up:

(http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/40011683)

A separate YouTube episode will follow, with several different poems as well as interview footage from the Bloomsbury Festival launch of In Protest: 150 Poems For Human Rights, to which Andrew contributed a poem.

The next live Keshco event is on the weekend of Saturday 23rd November, celebrating 19 years of Keshco, 30 years of Now That's What I Call Music, and 50 years of Dr Who!