Andy Brain
London
Purveyors of the finest psychedelic folk, tatty synthpop and odd noises. Left-wing. Open-minded. Open-ended. All human life is here.
We're Keshco, a quartet who play psychedelia, synthpop, folk, cut-ups, jingles... whatever we feel like. We all write, sing and play multiple instruments. It's a proper cottage industry, all recorded and released from home.
Unifying themes include unsparingly honest self-deprecation, left-wing social/political outlook, love of the nervous outsider, and a fair dose of whimsy and surrealism. We're not keen on repeating ourselves, so do dig deep as there's good stuff (lyrically, melodically, rhythmically) all the way back.
We occasionally do online concerts from home, and we release an EP every few months. There are also comedy films, and our own zine, "Beware!".
To be clear: our music is about all bits of human experience. We try to put across all parts of life, the rushing highs and the crushing lows, the mundane and the bizarre. Sometimes all at once. Hearing the beginning of a song is no guarantee that the end will be the same. Hearing the beginning of an album is no guarantee of anything. Some songs are deadly serious. Some are froth. Some are both, because you can do that with words.
Some things we don't do. We are never right-wing, never jaded hipsters, and we never set out to offend good people. We will never make the music you hear on Radio 1. We will never stop caring. We will never stop pushing the boundaries of what we can call Keshco and how far we can push ourselves. We will never stop.
BIOGRAPHY:
Keshco's history goes back to schooldays. Robert Follen and Andrew Brain have been playing and writing together since they first met at school in 1994. Luke Sample met them in 2001 in Leicester; and Caroline Vile was band manager before joining in 2015. Several others have dropped in from time to time.
Central to Keshco’s story has been continual outsider status, and a freewheeling approach which has always taken in grim humour, self-deprecation, political comment, and both precise carefully-orchestrated bits and chance composition. Some would say you shouldn’t do that in the same band. But that’s where the art is. That’s more like how you experience the world. Our main struggle is perhaps how to put this across in a way that is understood as intentional.
There were several 1990s Keshco cassettes, and CDs from 2000 onwards, all as schizophrenic as the more recent releases.
From 2008 Keshco took to the free scene, and have continued releasing a string of EPs for netlabels.
Keshco also release music as Bleak House - crumbly ambient library incidentals.
Keshco’s tracks
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