Music For Skint Filmmakers? Music For Everyone

Hello Kesh-Chums,

Filmmaker's Reference Kit V2 cover artwork.
Drawn by Bob for Bob Art Models, coloured by Andy.

July 14th is Netlabel Day, and once again we've saved up an album for release as part of this international celebration of unfettered creativity. Our new album is... Filmmaker's Reference Kit Volume 2.

One of the aspects we enjoy most about putting out music (...the only aspect?) is learning about all the varied uses filmmakers have found for our tunes over recent years. This new collection features 21 tunes perfect for your next production, from bombastic title music to quirky idents, break bumpers, and suspense-laden incidentals. Otherwise, let these toe-tappers become your own personal soundtracks through your day. As personally approved by Stanley Kubrick!

Lyric fans, don't worry: we'll be back with another album of protest songs when the collective depression lightens long enough to press "record" and sing about how terribly messed up everything and everyone is (apart from you, you're alright). Meanwhile, why not join a community choir?

The tunes here include some very new pieces (even recorded within the last week), and other bits from almost a decade ago. Some of the incidentals are rescued from our comedy film, "Johnny Cocktail: Obscured By Masks". Listen to Luke's exciting cosmic mellifluity on "The Fractured Flute Of Time", and Bob's effusive melodies on "Japanese Brain Buzz". You may enjoy my music hall singalong, "Play For Your People", originally composed as a song for the CONIFA alternative World Cup and perhaps best without the lyrics.

IMPORTANT TITLING NOTE! When we uploaded this album to our usual distributor in order to reach the major streaming sites, it was initially rejected as the helpful genre suggestions in the titles were seen as too leading. Harrumph. This was after we’d already released the album on the free sites. Reluctantly, we updated 12 of the bracketed sections of the titles in order to make them compliant with the streaming site policies. So, some of the songs are floating around on the internet with two titles, both of which are technically correct. Use whichever you prefer.

Anyway, catch you soon, or vice versa. Stay in touch while we're all around,

A x

January news

Hello Kesh-chums,

We're well into 2017, and there's plenty to update you with.

Live performance on Resonance FM 28 Jan
We're returning for our fourth live session on Dexter Bentley's always intriguing Hello Goodbye show on Resonance FM, London's arts station. This will be broadcast between 12pm-1.30pm UK-time on Saturday 28 January, on 104.4 FM or via the internet: https://resonancefm.com/

More info on the Hello Goodbye show: https://hellogoodbyeshow.com/

Sound And Vision - aired 7 Jan
We released an interpretation of "Sound And Vision" over Christmas: https://soundcloud.com/keshco/sound-and-vision

This was broadcast as part of a Resonance FM four-hour special on Saturday 7 January, alongside a load of exciting and mostly bespoke versions of Bowie tunes through the ages. This can be heard here (the show's been split into three parts, and ours is the first track in part 2): https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/the-hello-goodbye-show-07-january-2017-the-day-before-part-2/

Peace song - video and Brussels screening 22 Jan
Keshco are among over 30 groups (mainly activist choirs) who are taking part in a Brussels-based art project in support of conscientious objection to war. We recorded a version of the newly-written anthem, "Say No! (The Deserter's Song), a complex song by Elvis Peeters and Dick van der Harst which we've interpreted for vocals, clarinet, synth and beatboxing. Our video will be broadcast alongside others at a live event this Sunday, 22 January, at Kaaitheater in Brussels. This event will also feature some live performances (not from us) and will be well worth attending if you're near Brussels this weekend.

Our video of "Say No!" is viewable on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/198727287
Tickets for the live event at Kaaitheater, Brussels: https://www.kaaitheater.be/nl/agenda/say-no

Latest album - Beware! Vision Vol 8
The latest Keshco album is "Beware! Vision Vol 8: Hard Levitation 23/11/13", a final 22-track collection of songs and soundtracks (some highly edited) from our mammoth home concert in November 2013. You can grab it from:

Bandcamp: https://keshco.bandcamp.com/album/beware-vision-vol-8-keshco-hard-levitation-23-11-13
Free Music Archive: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Keshco/Beware_Vision_Vol_8_Keshco_Hard_Levitation_231113

Recent soundtracks
Here are a couple of notable recent additions to the growing catalogue of film clips that talented auteurs from around the world have been soundtracking with Keshco and Bleak House tunes:

What Happens To The Planet Now? (dir: Celia Jacobs) https://vimeo.com/197436460
Paper Trick or Treater (dir: Caroline Voagen Nelson) https://vimeo.com/188562224

Streaming links
Most of our albums are now available through the major streaming services, and playing these tunes (or adding us to playlists) actually brings us a little extra revenue, which is really appreciated and makes future projects more likely. You can find us here:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7d0wPHbHFUXnwnP3BQVqaV
Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Ags5ayxa7ljg576dipfgbosikum?t=Keshco
Deezer: http://www.deezer.com/artist/1135244
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/keshco/id312496623
 
Do stay in touch!
Andy  x

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).

An advert

This is the only thing to be seen doing on 20th December:

Futile Peace Offering: An Article

She's got the whole world in her hands.

22nd December 2011 brought the release of Keshco's third EP for those beautiful people at the Swedish netlabel 23 Seconds. "Futile Peace Offering" is a collection of eight new tunes, with a couple of toe-tappers and a couple of spine-tinglers amongst the ranks. So, how did it come about? Beware! sent a reporter to find out...

FERTILITY IN PIECES by Adrienne Darvell

"The key word for 2011 is 'backlog'", asserts Andy Brain, Keshco's longtime singer-songwriter-producer, currently sat cross-legged on his carpet packing away his Christmas decorations. "We've always had more projects than we knew what to do with, so this year we deliberately prepped up the Middle Room CD [for side-project Bleak House] and finished up the Johnny Cocktail movie, before turning back to music in time for another Christmas release."

Ah, the Christmas release, now a firmly established part of Keshco's year. This time, we have a cover image of a cupcake being offered to the camera. Stuck into its psychedelic icing (or is it an Earth-like map?) are six plastic figures of world leaders, factory-white, still attached to their moulding bar as if representing a family tree, or perhaps hanging from gallows. The EP is cheerily entitled "Futile Peace Offering". Is the title significant? "Ho yes. But the thing that's missing, which was part of the original plan, was a song about the United Nations. Very prog stylings, with overlapping vocal lines and extended twiddly bits! I don't know when that will surface now, as it was about eight minutes long and this seemed the best place for it."

Nevertheless, listening to the EP now, the title seems to hold water, with a succession of meditations on impermanence, disharmony and frustration; even the ostensibly jaunty opener, "Top Deck", is shot through with misanthropy - its narrator desires an empty upper deck on the bus to be away from people and home, and entertains the prospect of disembarking at a random point (implicitly, to start again somewhere else), then is lulled into a dreamworld by the stroboscopic effects of "sunlight split through trees and railings", before the trip is eventually spoilt by his personal stereo breaking down, cueing a 2-minute outro of increasing intensity. The drums are quite wild on this one, aren't they? "Not half!" Andy drops some baubles into a box and starts disassembling a Nativity.

Keshco have always had a nice line in lovesongs, despite protestations that "it's not really what we do, is it?". Case in point: track 2, "Technicolor Universe", though you can detect a subtext. The singer, Robert in ardent mode, maintains a calm front against exterior storms - "work can go to the wall" as long as his beloved is there through the night - but the effect is not altogether reassuring, despite some desperately pretty chimes and synth lines. The track is a plea, delivered without surety; it's not made explicit whether the lady will stay, and the track ends suspended mid-break without resolution.

Andy has made Beware! a chai which is still too hot to drink, and there's nothing to dunk. In its place, he suggests a bowl of cereal. On the EP, it's back to work, of a sort - self-promotion, which every aspiring artiste will be only too familiar with, but Keshco have particular reservations. "Shelved" is a cut of lo-fi synthpop with the backing and vocals originally recorded by Luke on 4-track, "then copied to our super-dooper 8-track, then into Buzz for the full Depeche treatment". The accompanying electronic squeals hark back to Keshco of old, with the hiss and scuffs part of the overall aesthetic. The arduous nature of the task is emphasized by the metronomic beat and suppressed-anger vocals. Two minutes in, our focus shifts to what appears to be field recordings of a singer promoting his wares in some trendy music shop. He's turned down: "Ahh - we don't take CD-Rs." "No no, it's a CD, in a case. More ooh than ahh." But of course, it's Robert and Andy in character. "That is actually pretty accurate, for London anyway."

Beware! starts to wonder if the title has further resonances. Has all been well in the camp this year? "Well, we all get frustrated - either because we get out-of-practice and then it takes some time to hit the spot, or we get particularly bored by the promo side of things, as you've heard! - or when we've done gigs cos it always goes balls-up somehow."

Hmm. Andy, you've not done synthpop for a while, is this track a first step back to the genre? The ginger boffin grimaces. "Well... we've always tried to mix folk and electronic elements, it just seemed to make sense for 'Shelved'. I think we will be trying some pure electronic things in future EPs, ask me again next year!"

Next up, an acoustic ditty with a touch of Suzanne Vega about it ("Really?" Andy replies, as if it's only just occurred to him), "Architecture Weekly" casts an acerbic eye around the London that two of the band still call home. "Old Street was the specific influence, though the lyric built up over various bus journeys. You know - at any given point, half the city seems to be in flux, and Transport for London has this booklet explaining how they are overhauling every Tube line - the timeline extends until about 2030. At which point they'll start over again". Here, the band's by-now-signature reverb is used with a chaotic lapsteel to recreate the screeching and banging that is part of the modern skyline. The track ends with a nod to the renewed interest in anti-capitalist protest, exhorting all to "reclaim the city" - "Hey kids, drink up we're leaving, to replant the garden, dig a fishpond as well".

What's the other sane response to all this concrete? Well we all want to get away. "Departure Lounge" is one of the most library music-styled pieces we've seen from Keshco, which runs a fine line between parody and Pages From Ceefax. Tidal waves of cymbals against a pair of slipsliding lead guitars, called to a halt by the airport chimes of the boarding call. A jetliner screams across the stereo. A massively upbeat jam kicks in, all wicky-wicky percussion and insane twanging, the perfect music for dancing ninnies.

It's straight back down to earth, as metallic distorted Casiotone percussion heralds "Long Road To Castle Acre", a post-break-up lament backed by transistor organ and restrained tremolo guitar and bass. "That one had a... nutty genesis. Robert sang the original lead vocal with the beats and organ, then played that mixdown in Goldwave through the air and recorded a mono track of live drums over the top. We then worked from that mono track when adding the other instruments. It adds a kind of telephone quality to his voice."

Perhaps the most noticeable addition to the sonic palette this time is the lapsteel ("we're still honeymooning with it", Andy grins); and indeed track 7, "Like Home", is a complete band of the things, seemingly put through a long wave radio. Snatches of other tracks jostle with the meanderings of the pure electronic tone of the airwaves, before taking over the following minute completely.

The EP's last track, "Wiped", is pretty sombre. "It's specifically a tribute to Broadcast singer Trish Keenan, who died in January 2011. We had some contact years ago, and I'd always hoped our paths would cross again, so took it pretty badly. At the time, I was reading a book about the attempts to recover lost episodes of [British sci-fi serial] Doctor Who, and some of the increasingly convoluted concepts seemed to fit." The track has more than a whiff of Americana, with that lapsteel again taking on melodic duties. "We kept that one pretty simple, as the lapsteel and reverb seemed to do all the work by themselves. You've also got the reference to hauntology, which is the style they were exploring a couple of years back."

The stereo has fallen silent. So, what comes next, Andy? His eyes briefly light up. "Well, we have this 26 minute track... and another Cocktail, and another Bleak House, and a cassette, a horror EP, and a bonsai EP..." With that, Beware! downs its chai and takes its leave.

Earlobe Holistics liner notes

E.H. artwork by Gareth Monger, 2000

Let's go back to the millennium. What were Keshco up to? Minidiscs at the ready, for the story behind Earlobe Holistics...

For the previous four years, the early Keshco demos had been on copied cassettes, through standard home stereo units. Anything that needed extra parts had to be played back through the air. After a while, we got two tape-to-tape systems with the ability to overdub through a mic socket whilst copying, though our mics were uniformly pound-shop crap so the results weren't too good. These cassettes mostly went back and forth within the band, or occasionally to some unlucky girl. In mid-1998, we decided to record a "trying-our-hardest" three-track demo to send to record companies, though it was mostly family members who were subjected to it.

University called. In spring 1999, I splashed out on a Fostex multitracker. The X-77 had four tracks, six inputs, a neat rotary pitch control, and I loved it to bits. This wasn't to say we instantly started recording band masterpieces. I was in Leicester; Robert and Gareth were still in the Fens and soon to head off to Ipswich and Blackpool respectively. When we did meet up, we were more likely to use a dictaphone to get our tunes down (or really, more likely just to sit down and watch Stella Street).

It was around this time that I heard a single by European art-rock duo Schulte/Eriksson. "For The Sake Of Clarity" (YouTube link) was delightful, confusing, polyrhythmic and playful. Eagerly I sent off for their homemade album. Its copy-of-copy, looping fragments made perfect sense to my ears, just as I was acquiring a taste for the Fall through their album "Cerebral Caustic" - not generally regarded as a classic, but the textures were so dense, scuffed, crushed - perfect cassette music.

We'd been going through a poor time of it as a band. Barely rehearsing, nowhere near the sounds we wanted, anything with more than four chords too complex to learn, I got pretty down about the prospects for my new songs. Suddenly here was an answer. We wouldn't learn the carefully written songs, we'd just make stuff up as we went along! Sweet relief! I'd enjoyed making cut-ups on cassettes for years, and so maybe we could do something larger with the technique.

Months passed. At the start of 2000, I splashed out again and spent £200 on a then quite impressive Sony MiniDisc recorder. Now, songs could be added, chopped into bits and redistributed within the running order. Perfect.

What eventually emerged on Earlobe Holistics was an odd mixture, and went through a few edits before its final form. It opens with a typically daft cut-up taken from the 1998 demo, and the attendant first track, "Livsey Street", a rather Madness/Morrissey-aping Britpop vignette recorded initially on Robert's Goodmans Boogie Box, with him on various percussion and me on the vocals, guitars and keys. The final vocal overdub was achieved on one of those big portable radio/cassette systems with the L/R stereo microphones, by playing the fourth-generation backing track through the air towards the right side with me singing and guitaring into the left side. It's amazing there's any top end left.

We then hear the first evidence of the Fostex 4-track - "On Our Big Travel" which is a whimsical solo affair recorded in Leicester. Following this is a dictaphone chant improvised by me, Robert and Gareth, "Photograph"; and another solo recording, "Airport 1981" which is tuneful enough but highly indebted to Stereolab. We tried rehearsing it as a 4-piece band when we were preparing for stardom the following summer, but couldn't quite get it to swing.

"Videoesque" was an early spoken-word piece about decay looked at through the ephemeral medium of a video collection - my teenage videos regularly feature programmes on the verge of disintegration, what with being recorded through a dodgy Fen aerial, through a dirty video head, onto a 4-hour cassette recording at half-speed to cram even more material on board. Ludicrous signal to noise ratios. Bad enough recording from Anglia, but what if I wanted a programme from Central...? It's backed by a drum loop of Robert from 1995, on the school snare drum. Heehee!

"Ding Dong Dang" is a jingle made from guitar harmonics. Someone stick it on an ident. Then there's "Drowning In Melodrama", which was written in Spring 1998 as a deliberately easy track - six verses following the same chord pattern. The lyric's nothing to fax home about, but does namecheck "Screw The Roses, Send Me The Thorns" which should be in every sensible bedside cabinet. Some interest has been added later with a few judicious overdubs, courtesy of shareware program Multiquence, including some backwards school noises. Double heehee!

We're still approaching the halfway point here, so I'll stick to the interesting bits. "Angry" was recorded on a visit to Ipswich (me with guitar, Robert drumming on his desk) and has resurfaced a few times (even recently with Luke). It's somewhere between Portishead and a resigned Elvis Costello. "F/S Double" is a guitar in odd tuning, something like C-F-Bb-G-A-D.

(The original) Side Two features an experiment called "What Would You" where Robert and I were trying to keep shifting rhythms against each other, and he was using his voice like a sampling keyboard - "what would you, what would you do if I, wha- what wou- what would you do" (etc). The piece I'm most fond of, though, was one of many three-man improvised instrumentals that we did in 1995/6 during our lunchtimes. We would usually grab as many keyboards as we could find leads for, and set them up in a practice room with my trusty Spinney Tronic tape recorder laid in the middle. "Earlobe Enhancement" is a seven-minute slab of Casiotone prog that is about the closest we got to Boards Of Canada territory, four years before I knew they existed. It features a sterling contribution from our old co-founder, bass player and single-finger-chord picker, Aeldun, including his unexpected (to him) solo in the middle. Robert and I do very characteristic keyboard noodling, and the whole thing's been augmented with some careful overdubs through Multiquence.

The whole thing ends with an avalanche of cut-ups and finally a squealing solo from Robert on broken ukelele with a crappy mic stuck inside the sound hole. Yes, you should hear "Jazzy Bob's Lead Noodling Hour".

So, what happened to Earlobe Holistics? Well, nothing. It came with us to Glastonbury in 2000, where copies were handed to new-folkies It's Jo & Danny, and to a security guy "to give to Jools Holland". We'd hoped to track down John Peel, but alas no. Upon joining mp3.com that summer, I got on with assembling what would become the mainly solo The Seeds Of Wom, whilst we briefly tried our hand at being a four-piece band again. These days, E.H. is available on CD, and still stands as the only way to hear what Keshco sounded like in the late 1990s.

Music From The Middle Room liner notes

A new album of library music has just been released by Bleak House. So, who or what is Bleak House, and just what does it have to do with Keshco?

Well, it may bemuse you to learn that we have two bands on the go. Bleak House is an alter-ego; in fact, one of many (not to clutter this post with the history of, say, Guivarsh) and probably the longest, having begun gestation in the market city of Leicester, England, back in 2001, with a note attached to a student union messageboard. At first, Bleak House was the folk-rock sister of Keshco, with a catalogue of jaunty kitchen sink pop tunes and occasional sci-fi/thriller narratives. Then life happened, in its unassuming way, and the House went quiet, just another name in the tattered old band directory.

In 2004 we, that is Andy (your blogger) and Luke, started a tradition of yearly recording holidays down in Exmouth, where Luke's mum keeps a whole arsenal of musical instruments. There's an upright piano, a stash of various recorders, thumb-pianos, a Casio keyboard, some percussion, and we had our guitars. The recordings we made were mostly pretty instrumentals, fairly sparse and sometimes quite haunting. Of course we did nothing with these - what did you expect? Instead the years rolled past, and increasingly we went out in our other guise of Keshco. These yearly recordings continued though, until we had quite an embarrassment of moody incidentals.

Fast-forward to this year, and the overflowing pot of potential projects was far too heavy to lug around, so in a manner completely unlike Prince going back to his vault, we cautiously crept back inside the Bleak House. The 2006 collection seemed particularly ripe for harvesting, and after a little gentle augmenting and editing, the collection I am about to describe appeared, courtesy of Moldovan netlabel Silent Flow. We're determined to record for a netlabel in every country, and are up to our fourth now...

This album, "Music From The Middle Room", is divided into two suites for ease of listening, each roughly half an hour long. The first, "Through The Witch Window", opens with an 11 minute number called "Highway Acrylic", where Luke's electric guitar figure morphs glacially against my pitter-patter piano, and some extra acoustic guitar. It's a deliberately ponderous start, with a good 30 seconds of room ambience, to bring you into the right frame of mind for listening. Slow down, and take some time out.

Our second track is the autumnal "Barometer", with a mantra-like guitar around which several chordal possibilities are hung. You'll just make out some wobbly crackly tones from the Yamaha VSS-200 voice keyboard.

Some of these tunes benefited from being rerouted through Jeskola's Buzz tracker, the first of which is "Oil Burner". It's also the first track to feature Robert's drums, here tubthumping against our clanging guitars until a gas cloud of reverb boils up, swamping the listener in a dreamy steamy fug for a good three minutes.

Track four is the wonky "Insect Trap", all a chattering and clattering tangle. It leads us to "Skirting Boards", a simple, almost Neu!-like sunrise melody on Luke's guitar confirmed by deep piano notes and occasional twinkles, to which a dexterous stereo stampede of toms has been added. Five minutes of this give way to an ascending spiral of harmonics, like dust motes rising in fresh sunlight. The side ends with "Antiseptic", a sound collage from the end of a 4-track that owes some extra thanks to Goldwave, the freeware audio editor.

The second suite is titled "Behind The Cellar Door" and it opens (after your moment of grace; you did pause for an ear-stretch didn't you?) with a guitarless piece, "Coloured Lead Crayons". The electronic tones and arpeggios of the VSS-200 share centre stage with the aching piano and a gently delayed Casio keyboard. Behind the first few minutes you will note some humans approximating a choir. This was one of the recent additions, with I think five Roberts and five Andys improvising to their heart's content.

Next we hear Luke's tumbling delayed guitar figure of "Biology Slides", glitchy and scratchy, against my simple piano melody. Probably the most intense track on the album, building to a teasingly-warped coda.

"Praise Book" is almost as open, simple and timeless as it sounds. Then, somehow, we take you a few years forward; Luke's organ meditation "Everything Is Broken, Or Intact" comes from the Autumn 2010 session, and for me conjures up a Twin Peaks air of unspoken menace. What exactly happened here last night?

Another question: What have those darn children been up to all this time? Well, I can't say, as there are no children in the Bleak House. But there is something moving in the "Toy Cupboard". This rather jolly piece was saved by Robert and a lapful of tiny instruments - two xylophones, a harmonica, pitch pipes, a thumb-piano. Soothing sounds for adults?

Before you can escape the cellar, you have to shake hands with the tactile epiphany of "Coloured Lead Fingers". Luke's keyboard part holds steady whilst my piano plays across and around the rhythm, and Robert's violin adds a frisson of expectation.

And there you have it. Twelve tracks from the dusty heart of the Bleak House, laid out for your relaxation and enjoyment. Any film-makers in search of backing tracks for documentaries, dramas or deconstructivisms, please do get in touch.

How to play our version of "By This River"

World Oceans Day takes place each year on 8th June, and for the last three years we've contributed tracks to special CDs curated by the aquatically-inclined Notebook Of A Mermaid. For the 2011 CD we offered our version of "By This River", a Brian Eno song originally from the album "Before and After Science" (Amazon UK; Amazon US), released in 1977.

Here's how I played the main riff, originally a piano part, on my Washburn D10SCE acoustic. Note: this is the first time I've put tab online! It's not very exciting tab, as the part is very simple - all that changes is the bass note.

Capo 3 

Bb

e|3-2-------------|----------------|

B|----3-0-3-------|----------------|

G|----------0-2-4-|--0--2--4-------|

D|----------------|--0--2--4-------|

A|----------------|----------------|

E|3---------------|----------------| 

Gm 

e|3-2-------------|----------------| 

B|----3-0-3-------|----------------|

G|----------0-2-4-|--0--2--4-------|

D|----------------|--0--2--4-------| 

A|----------------|----------------| 

E|0---------------|----------------|

Eb 

e|3-2-------------|----------------|

B|----3-0-3-------|----------------|

G|----------0-2-4-|--0--2--4-------|

D|----------------|--0--2--4-------|

A|3---------------|----------------|

E|----------------|----------------|

Gm

e|3-2-------------|----------------|
B|----3-0-3-------|----------------|
G|----------0-2-4-|--0--2--4-------|
D|----------------|--0--2--4-------|
A|----------------|----------------|
E|0---------------|----------------|

 

Luke's lap steel was tuned to an open G chord, and Robert played his recently-constructed percussive frame from which hang a multitude of cheap wind chimes, keys, washers, random sections of metal etc etc. Robert and I sang unison lead vocals, and then Luke added a melodic flute part during the middle and ending, to top the whole thing off.

We recorded the song on our 8-track, and then ported it into Buzz where I added plenty of the Sonic Verb plugin to give a bit of distance.

You can watch the video for our version of "By This River" on YouTube here.

Record Store Day

So, did you spot any?  We were both excited and amused to put together a special single release for the annual Record Store Day, and with luck an indie shop near you will have held a copy or two of "No Sale!". The single features, on the A-side, one of our very oldest songs, "Welcome To Our Corner Shop", dragged kicking and squawking into the modern era, and as its flipside, the newest thing we've written, "Orange Nightmare Record Fair", a distinctly trippy instrumental.

No worries if you missed out - we've got a few copies left of the 200 here and will have them for sale at our upcoming performances, or you can drop us a pound.

Accountants By Day liner notes

A gentle welcome, dear friend. You may be pleased to learn that we have recorded another EP for that lovely Swedish netlabel, 23 Seconds. It's called Accountants By Day, has eight tracks totalling 21 and a half minutes, and it's fair to say it's a cracker. Some of our best tunes committed to binary. It'll fit on a sleek 3-inch CD (a sleeker but not cheaper option, despite what one witless reviewer assumed), although you may prefer the vanilla option of a full 5-incher (do you not care about clutter?!).

Some thoughts about the recording and mixing process. All of the tracks were written in 2010, well pretty much; "Enlightenment" started as a single phrase a few months earlier but was completed on Sunday 10th January in the dark. It stems from a plan to write a sci-fi themed EP; what better sci-fi to write about than Doctor Who, and what story more suited to songform than Peter Davison's "Enlightenment"? The sci-fi idea is still percolating; expect more in the coming year. It's only a gentle thematic reference; the rest of the lyric a playing-around with amateur astronomical themes. The Sky At Night is a great programme. Can't believe I didn't latch on sooner. The last bit recorded was Luke's flute solo, with its triple trill finale.

We shoot forward to a transitional piece, "All I Never Wanted". We reckoned a little mood-shifter was necessary, and Bob's zither and cymbals did the rest. I think a collection of library music would be a good diversion for us, freed of the tyranny of lyrical narrative. You may beg to differ. Our long-suffering mixing program, Jeskola's Buzz (why am I writing that? It's the mixer, i.e. me, who suffers, bent-backed at the desk for hours trying to alchemise whilst everyone sleeps off their curry... woe, woe, woe) ...features a fabulous reverb plugin, Sonic Verb, crafted to resemble a pricey reverb of the early 00s, and which features on all the tracks on the EP. Here it's cranked up. I love the shiver-down-the-spine of the zither. Not sure if we can replicate it now Bob's bought a tuning key.

Have you ever hated your boss? Ah, but have you ever committed those thoughts to wax? Nor have we, but we did use our new-ish Korg D888 digital multitracker on this collection, and one of its first wriggling specimens was Bob's "Below The Waves" (Song For A Bastard Boss). A bluesy belch of bile, its instrumental break sees several badly-played quiet guitars going through a dozen effects boxes. I'm enjoying playing slide guitar these days. But oh! the luxury of recording the basic band track in the same room at the same time, with multiple mics on the drums.

Sex tourism is go! "Abysinnia Next Week" began life as another song of Bob's called "White Darth Vader"; I picked out the underlying filth in its semi-nonsense lyrics and added some suitable lines. (The original synthpop version is still to come, on another EP, someday...) The backing track was mostly recorded in Exmouth at Luke's mum's house, where there is a great selection of recorders. Freak, man!

After all that rampancy, you need a comedown, and here we have "Fly By Night". It has something to do with being persuaded to volunteer at an adults' charity ball, and having a miserable time. Rigsby comes to mind: "The permissive society? It doesn't exist. And I should know - I've looked for it". But of course, it needs to be looking for you. Listen out for a fierce and wonky guitar solo (ha!) and a fierce and wonky melodica (double ha!). This was the last thing recorded for the EP - we kept it standing around in the corner until December wearing only a simile.

"Wafternoon" also hung around for a little while, until its silly lyric had infused through the music properly. It was prompted by a wobbly moment on the south coast. The middle section features two kazoos (never underestimate the kazoo), woozy slide from Luke and a kitschy keyboard solo by myself.

It's reverb to 11 on the penultimate track, a riot of stereo percussion which includes coins spun on drum heads, a wind-up plastic robot, a wooden metronome, wall chimes, and a metal Beatles wall sign struck like a gong. It's named in honour of the daft comedian Marty Feldman, and nearly had the suffix "Emergency Ambulance". Imagine a fierce storm in an English village, trees coming down in people's gardens, slates sliding off roofs, and Marty riding through the sheeting rain, perhaps wiping the windscreen with a hanky when the wipers get stuck.

We end the EP in solemn territory. Having first heard it after perusing Elena Filatova's Chernobyl photos, "Son of a Systems Engineer Manager" conveys such an air of weary resignation, that it's quite possible to believe Luke went and sabotaged a power station the following day. The protagonist's hopes are allowed to pick up briefly in the psychedelic middle 8, before coming back to the present with a distorted klaxon (having dozed off on the night shift?). You may be amused to note the rumblings over the final minute are provided by my washing machine, which just happened to go onto its spin cycle at the right moment. Who needs BBC Sound Effects CDs?

Kesh in the summertime

So, my boylets and girlings, are you bouncing freely in these lovely sunstreaked days? Remember, tanning is indecent.

I thought I should bring us all up-to-date on what's been going on these last few months, before it all escapes my brain in a slow twist of early-onset Alzheimer's sieve action. (Always hate the fast spin cycle on our old washer-dryer.)

Your friends at Keshco (Mr Kesh has a Company, remember...) have not been so idle in the first half of the year. Firstly we completed an EP, "Lego Of Me", at the start of March, just missing our self-imposed deadline of Valentine's Day. Could have been an Easter release I suppose. But it's still in the record company vaults! I am given to understand that these six tracks of pure gooey chocolatey goodness are to be unleashed any week now. Here's the track-listing:

She Knows Disco / More Deserving / James Harries / Decadent Robots / Inhale / Advert From Heaven

Next, we turned our attention to recording a track for this year's International Ocean Day compilation, curated by the delectably fishy Notebook Of A Mermaid. The theme this year was ocean covers, and so we hit upon a version of "Oceans In The Hall" by the Ladybug Transistor. This song (all six minutes of it!) can now be downloaded from our MySpace page, but there should be a home for the whole compilation somewhere online, soon.

We completed an interview for a video project by our friendly Swedish label friends at 23 Seconds, all about free music and free culture. That was fun and then Johan, and also John from stablemates Azoora, tagged along whilst we wobbled around Tesco making a video for our "Crimes Of Casio". Pop-tastic!

The last thing we put out was our brand spanking new football anthem, "Penalty Shot!". I hope you've already checked out the video on our YouTube page. The song should find a home in a forthcoming EP...

...of which there should be a few! We've got at least three more of these little releases in mind, and have a hope to put out a netlabel EP on each continent over the next year. "Keshco - The Continents Collection" - doesn't it sound fab? If you know of any suitable labels, particularly outside Europe, please get in touch.

In other video news, Johnny Cocktail's trip through the dreamscape (started in 2004, would you believe) is still in a morass of editing, though creeping towards its end stages.

A couple of live shows are tentatively planned, which we think will be more acoustic.

That's enough to be getting on with for now. I'll wish you a good morrow and let's be in touch a bit more often, hm!

Echo! (Echo!)

Reverbnation is a pointless site. It has not gained us any friends or plays, despite numerous exclusives - but it has sucked up an awful lot of time. People go to MySpace or Last.fm, not Reverbnation. Nobody wants to click on its silly widgets, which it encourages you to stick all over the net. It spams us every few days with emails saying "you are about to lose chart positions at Reverbnation" - how we ever gained any is beyond me, seeing as nobody clicks through to the site. Sometimes, the twinkly sites really are not the best sites.

In other news: the second Keshco album, "The Seeds of Wom", is now completely free to download via archive.org. It's been ten years now since its release. I hope you'll help yourself. It's released under a Creative Commons licence, so you're welcome to remix the tracks, should you be so disposed.

This is what Autumn does...

Darkness encroaches, even forcing me to use hated striplights at work. How do we save the "Task" video, with its imagined lush N4 ripeness? Cycle around inside the garden centre or what? Shall I employ chromakey leaves? Rotoscope the whole thing? Ah well, best finish off a Johnny Cocktail or two. See our Youtube page for previous examples.

Back in August, we recorded a cover of acapella ditty "Coma" by fellow WM Recordings artiste Bacco Baccanels. This has now been featured on the anniversary WM 100 album, which is a free download (ooo yeah!) from http://www.wmrecordings.com ...oh go on, have a click.

Is there anybody there?

THIS IS AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE KESHCOLOGIST SOCIETY.

"Evolving in the dark". The words of Muldaway McDoon, scientist and scholar, at the Trolley Crash of 1st April, when he interrupted his talk on Darwin to make a point about the continuing fortunes of Keshco to his minimal audience. Sadly, this is still how it feels. Our radio plays on last.fm have steadily decreased ever since they introduced the new revenue streams in the spring (another nail in the coffin, hurrah!), and nobody external to our friend group has expressed any interest in Dak. Yes we are fed up. It's just impossible these days. More and more music is piling up, everywhere, and it seems that even the modest ambition of getting our songs out there (and we're not even talking about "making it", hell no, not in this century) is unattainable. No gig offers, no radio plays, no sales, no nice comments by all the people who downloaded our songs or watched our videos - it's just tedious. (Apologies if I've offended one of the few people who've actually left a comment these last few years, they have really cheered us up.)

It's not all doom and gloom. A few waterbeds in the desert: the delightful Vombat Radio, and... well, actually, that's it right now.

I hate biorhythms.

Dak is deforested

So, the new album is finally out. Isn't it exciting? This bunch of songs has been hanging around for a long old time - some of them go back to 2002! - but we've tried to give them all a flavour of This Year's Keshco. It's been a much more collaborative effort this time, and I hope the richness of the sound reflects that.

Our problems are now manifold. Who should we try to send the CDs to? Should we approach indie music shops? Do we need a barcode? Is it worth getting a whole run professionally pressed up? If so, shouldn't the thing really be mastered by a proper engineer first? But how would we trust them to do the master we want? I well remember the time I helped out on keyboards for an alt-rock band in Leicester. They made a 7-track EP - part recorded at a studio above a Tae-Kwondo hall on the high street (OK apart from the recording guy refusing to undertake any complex overdubs), and part in a local college. Eventually, through gigging and scrimping, they got enough cash to stump up for a mastering job. Unfortunately, the bloke doing the mastering made a few bad choices (e.g. bringing up first take vocals, mixing hard left and hard right) and then they were stuck with it.

Anyway - how the heck is someone else meant to master stuff that's been done on Buzz, at home? Nary a mixing desk in sight. I've done my best with my faulty ears and my faulty stereo. Please don't be like the trench-coated dullards in Leicester city centre who once tried to sell me a faceless-looking synth album with the immortal line: "it's completely clean, there's no hiss". Yes and what about the quality of the songs, huh? No hiss. Shitehawks.

UPDATE: You can still buy Deforestation of Dak through Amazon UK (it's cheaper to buy direct from us, but hey if you're kind enough to click through and buy another product of your choice, we get a few pennies via the affiliate thingy. Hurrah!). Remember, it's on CD, not vinyl. Not vinyl! Please don't go buying what someone's mistakenly listed as a vinyl copy.

H before C (and only one K)

At Christmas, I was made aware of "I Before E (Except After C): Old-School Ways To Remember Stuff", a little hardback book that started something of a trend in retro education guides for adults worried they may be losing the skills they picked up as kids. It got me thinking...

VISITOR: What, is he going to ditch the music and become a teacher at last?

This whole business of band names.

VISITOR: Ooff!

I once played a bit in Leicester with my friend Dominic who goes under the search engine-defying name of w/trem. We were hoping to be billed as "w/trem meets keshco", a potential nightmare for bookers if we'd kept it up. Instead they billed us as "Dom & Andy", a minor if typical cop-out.

But really though. This week's Time Out announces that there will be a gig on Sunday by a band called Kescho. I'm not sure who this band is but they've been following us around. Almost every gig we do, they show up, always when the signwriters forget to put our names up. They must have been to 70% of all the gigs we've ever played. There's that other band too, Keshko. They've been billed in our place more than a dozen times now. If I ever catch those double-K charlatans...

As for Keschko, well that's just a South London attempt to make us Communist.

There is one and only one accepted variant - Eshco, our own tribute band who for reasons best known to themselves have chosen to focus purely on our 1990s output.

Anyway, ladies and gentles, I hope that, should you find yourself engaged in writing the name of our band down in the near future, you'll think of our loosening grips on sanity, and recite the following:

H before C
and only one K

It doesn't rhyme, but it might just work.

Anxiously awaiting your response

Nowadays we're (finally) pretty regular at this whole gigging lark, but back in the early days of 2006, something like this was the only request we were getting. Heh. The scam element appears to be that they send you a cheque/CC payment for the fee, then tell you the gig is cancelled and demand you pay them the money back ASAP - their original payment then bounces (of course) so you're left out of pocket. I rediscovered this upon a bit of spring cleaning, and post as a warning in case anybody else is still receiving the same scam.

- - - - - - - -

Tuesday, 31 January, 2006 2:53 PM
From: "David Irons"

Hello,

I am pleased to let you know that i will be requiring your services and expertise for a My old pa birth day party.Please let me know to what extent you can be invovled in the party affair,the charges for your much needed services,the logistics invloved and your general organisation setup for my consideration.

Please do get back to me in earnest with answers to my inquiries so that we can set it up.

Below is what i would be needing your services for:

1)Live set performance
2)sound sytem
3)3 pieces band

And below are informations you need to know about the party:

1)Date:14th/15th March 2006.Time 12:30 P.M
2)Venue: our residence in London,Lea Brigde Road clapton pound E59 qd.
3)Adult birth celebration/Get together Party.
4)size:not more than 100 people
5)Its an in door party,which floor is 100 capacity.
6)Hours of playing 3 hours
7)No other band performing but you.

I would like to make it clear that the party is going to be a low profile party,we do not intend to exceed £1700 as budget for services you will be rendering,£200 for transport expenses and contigency.Please note that if you needed to be accomodated before the date we have a guest house you can stay so there will be no need for adding accomodation fee.

consequently,we would need you to give us a quote for the things we need you to take care of and your service charge so that we can arrange for payment to reach you asap so that preparation can begin in earnest as it's obvious that time it not on our side.Please be assured of our open-mindedness in our resolution to work with you.Also if there is anything we have not included to make this day a memorable one.please feel free to let us know as we require alot of your expertise and professionalism.On your arrival if you are will be performimg.

Please do get back to me in earnest with my questions and concerns,Because i have little or no time to arrange for the party because am travelling on a business assignment which i would like to make the deposit before living for my trip in other to avoid any setback in the upcoming celebration.

I am anxiously awaiting your response.
Cheers
David

2014 update: I note this post is still quite popular, and so if you're coming here to research dodgy emails, an interesting book on scambaiting is "Dear Annick", by the Bowrunner, which is wildly funny and available from Amazon UK here.

Keshco Wiki entry, 2008

What follows is the text of Keshco's entry on Wikipedia. It lasted about nine months, which I suppose is some sort of minor victory.

Keshco is a name used by a group of English artists and musicians to encompass various creative projects. These have included music CDs, short films, verse and artwork.

Keshco was formed in the mid-1990s in East Anglia, by Andrew Brain, Gareth Monger and Robert Follen. Luke Sample joined in 2006 after playing in offshoot band Bleak House.[1] Early projects included scam-baiting, notably an investigation into the business practices of The International Library of Poetry. In response to newspaper adverts making promises of fame and fortune through poetry, Keshco sent off several dozen pieces of flimsy verse, all of which received the same congratulatory letter suggesting each poem had reached the semi-final stage and would be an ideal candidate for publication - at a price.

Musically, Keshco write in many styles, including folk, electronica, psychedelia and outsider music. They display an interest in found sounds and have employed tape-splicing. Their lyrics have been recommended for their combination of grim honesty and surreal humour.[2][3]

They spent the late 1990s mainly home-recording, apart from two seasons of summer busking around East Anglia in 1998 and 1999. Their first full-length collection of music, "Earlobe Holistics", was an experiment in tape-splicing self-released on cassette with individually hand-drawn artwork. This was followed by a CD, "The Seeds Of Wom", released via mp3.com in late 2000. A third collection, "Saplings Of Sop", was self-released in 2002, followed by "Softened Fingers" in 2006.

In 2006, six Keshco songs were featured on the soundtrack of "20,000 Little Reasons", an hour-long gangster film directed by Andy Wilton and produced by Once Upon A Tyne Productions. This film received showings in the North-East and on Sky channel 244.

Live performances were often backed with projections, and from 2005 the band switched to primarily electronic performance. They began to showcase Robert Follen's interest in costume and mime. Independent reviews in 2007 displayed dismay at the gap between Keshco's creativity and stature within the industry.[4] A review in London's Time Out, published on 30 January 2008 compared Keshco to White Town and Lloyd Cole.

Short films made by Keshco include various episodes of Johnny Cocktail, a series about a "lifestyle guru/private investigator", and stop-motion animations. These have been shown at film nights around the UK.[5]

Outside projects include Gareth Monger's paleo-artwork - he is a commissioned artist for Oxford Natural History Museum amongst others[6]. Robert Follen's project to amass television footage featuring himself has led to appearances on (among others) Trisha, Look East, and Secret History: Boy Soldiers Of WW1.

On 16th February 2008 Keshco recorded a live radio session for London's arts station Resonance FM[7]. They played three tracks: 'Climate Dance', 'Think Alike' and 'I am Broken, I am Alba.' A short interview followed in which Keshco were quizzed on past and forthcoming appearances.

As of August 2008, Keshco's fifth release, "Deforestation of Dak" was close to completion.[8] An 22-minute EP "Trolley Crash" on Dutch label WM Recordings appeared in mid-2008.