MESHMASS at last get round to sorting out their october release, now that we are (all of us, just imagine) halfway through december and heading rapidly towards christmas. there are various reasons (or excuses, as we like to call them) for our unusual tardiness in this instance - firstly and above all there was a distinct lack of october in these parts, the little-known october shortage being caused by members of MESHMASS suddenly leaving the country and staggering about in the increasingly distant reaches of europa. there is nothing wrong with october per se - it is a useful month, separating september from november and containing many birthdays belonging to people we know. and it can be very attractive - indeed, in france, spain and portugal (we are told) it was BOILING HOT. as for the music, which to be honest we retrieved from abandoned bits of september we found down the back of the sofa and stuck to the side of the cooker, it's probably not our best release to date. unless you think it is, in which case we are wrong, as so often before. september was already struggling due to the infamous 'adjustments' made by our highly-trained technical department which resulted in underwater saxophone effects and a general feeling of queasy distance. however, this has now been entirely cured, november was really interesting and december is shaping up to be something rather special. in other news richard has reformed his effects rig, resulting in a greater clarity of sound from that particular region also, and peter has retrieved 2 saxophones from headwind music in bristol, where they were repaired by the excellent john pratt. they are an extraordinarily rare SML 'superluxe' alto, built in 1941 and a precursor of the SML 'super' series, his favourite saxophones - or alto saxophones, because the other was an SML gold medal mk 1 tenor which is like some sort of smoky dream. the 'superluxe' has 2 extra trill keys, very rare on SML saxes and plays a lot like a super 45 or 46. how wonderful it is.

MESHMASS have got a bit of a sulk on with soundcloud because it takes so much work to keep up with everybody who once listened to you up there and we in any case have no time in our crowded schedule for listening to music which does not emanate from the frothing vats in our bleak industrial cellars. we cannot remember the last time we heard any music. certainly not in october, of which there was a complete absence round here, making the selection of OCTOBERMASS 2017 a question of finding something to select rather than casting out vast bucketsful of the stuff and sorting around in the remaining entrails as is usually the case, when we are in danger of drowning in the resultant tidal waves. there will not be, and has not been, so much MESHMASS on soundcloud in the future - we used to post something nearly every week but now we can't be bothered. in unrelated news peter has been moonlighting in an improvising group called THE BARE SPRINGS which has even played a gig or two and specialises (it seems) in a region of high volume. it is a four-piece with guitar, bass and drums and him squarking away on various saxophones.

juddy and the months..... we are assailed by more than the usual measure of confusion, as certain of our membership chose this juncture to disappear into the increasingly distant reaches of the european continent, returning weeks later bearing only honey, bagasso and blurred memories. this has placed us in the invidious position of having to release a septembermass only in november (an effort we are shortly to make) and also to be rather alarmed at the prospect of octobermass at all. we realise this will not worry our overburdened subscribers (many of whom have failed even to download the augustmass we so carefully prepared for them - and which is rather good) but it is after all in breach of our contractual obligations, which is a matter we take very seriously. not only that but many of the recording we made in september (upon which we rely because of the almost complete lack of october in these parts), due to certain 'adjustments' made by our highly-trained technical team have been revealed to feature a saxophone (or possibly two or three, it is impossible to tell) recorded apparently underwater at the far end of an enormous cavern populated by echoing ghosts. woe. oh, woe is us. however we are delighted to announce that Justin Hopper's book including sussex myths and legends (among whom or which we certainly are and reside) is about to be published (and i quote):- "The Old Weird Albion is a creative non-fiction <(book, work, piece of writing)> exploring memory, myth and the landscape of the South Downs by American writer Justin Hopper. Published by Penned in the Margins..... this poetic essay <(tells)> of encounters with forgotten histories, eerie suburbs, eccentrics and visionaries." as for our various instrumentalisings, Richard has procured a wonderful new guitar made by Parker, or Parker-Knowles, or Parker-Bowles, possibly - i belive it's called a 'nightfly' - and Peter has 'invested' in a number of SML tenor saxes, mostly gold medal mk 1, with rolled toneholes and switchable g# linkage. some of them even work. he also now proudly displays for the amusement of drunken passers-by a borgani macerata curved soprano saxophone as once played by dead blokes. so, fear not, september soon!

australian netlabel NEW LEAF INC has released a MESHMASS collection called 'september songs'. the release features 'indogsnagnautovic', 'flutterhat', 'instigated', 'laminant', 'spindly' and 'started off so well', all tracks recorded in september 2016 by aural witness. 'flutterhat' and 'spindly' are pure improviation, 'started off so well' includes parts of a saxophone improvisation from the series 'isolated churches' and the rest are 'typical' meshmass using preprepared parts in ableton live from the laptop with saxophone, guitar and keyboard-phone. the longest track is 15:48 and the shortest 1:17.

unbelievable but true, certain things have been happening to MESHMASS which might actually be considered favourable. among these, REBECCA ASKEW attended our regular weekly meshfest at meshmass world central and contributed vocals to a session that also featured the return of the stick - richard played the chapman stick again with the mass for the first time since he destroyed one of the 1950's tannoys we used to monitor through. now we use headphones, so it's fairly safe - if confusing to singers, it transpires. REBECCA struggled womanfully with the unfamiliar conditions and process, she was i think perfectly shocked by the contributions of the machine and we all suffered a full gamut of inexplicable technical difficulties. nevertheless we emerged at the other end with just over an hour of new MESHMASS, one piece featuring a soulful vocal and another few with strange grunts and squeaks, which to be honest were mostly me. NEXT, i suppose, is the acceptance and release of a selection of pieces from september 2016 by the Australian netlable NEW LEAF INC, which will be turned loose into the world through their bandcamp site: Meshmass "September Songs" / April 10th - NLI004. we recommend it to you - it's wonderful, of course. and not content with that (for when have we ever been content?) MESHMASS were played on the BBC, the beloved programme 'LATE JUNCTION' played the improvised duet 'OH MOTHER', and despite all that the world has not ended.

januarymass 2017 MESHMASS have posted various things in various places, and some things even TO places. on Bandcamp we put up a compilation of odd bits we found lying around and also a random month just to show what a random month looks like. we also sent out the wonderful JANUARYMASS 2017 to our eager subscribers, 2 hours and 33 minutes of MESHMASS, carefully grade and sliced. Pieces range from 1 minute to 14 and a half minutes long, there are at least 7 duets among the 22 and there is one vocal. it is a foolish vocal, but there we are, that is the best we can do. these are the first pieces of a new year, our 7th, I should think. we struggle ceaselessly with the mass, trying to reduce and contain its ever-expanding girth, the sheer heft of it, its massive inertial thrust gathering all the music in the world into one horrible slurry. so we hacked and sliced, we chopped, we even burned, we cropped and stripped and shredded and impaled on spikes all manner of things, all sorts of beats and slices and yet januarymass still stretches like the boundless ocean, far out of sight, and the tide my friends is coming in. more mass. more shifting, omniversal mass, more involved repeatings, more bleats and blurs. always more and worse: the eternal motto of culture. mass is like culture, yes, it is a culture, a growth, like that other c word. uncontrolled growth, endless multiplication. here are your doses. smile.

well ! meshmass played the 'spirit of gravity' at the green door store in brighton, englistan, last night (thursday). by the time i had driven the 7 or so miles to this distant and romantic location it was possible to see through the windscreen of the little white van, something which had been rendered if not impossible then at least unlikely by a combination of frost and condensation. even my electrically powered driver's door window was frozen shut. windscreen wipers had no effect on the tiny crystals which had formed in an impenetrable sheet over the road ahead view, but i succeeded in scraping a little slot through which to peer and proceeded with a certain degree of caution (naturally, a degree or two below freezing.) it was warmer, or at least less frosty in brighton, where i had the usual excitements about parking, but promoter geoff reader kindly informed me that there was a parking permit behind the bar which i exchanged for my driving license. richard was already set up before i got there and a table and chair had been prepared for me, so i set up the laptop and then discovered that i had forgotten the mouse. after a minute or two i realised that i could not operate the computer without a mouse as i had disabled the touchpad 'pointing device' due to that fact that i kept doing unexpected things by touching it accidentally with my wrists, and i could not work out how to switch it on again without a mouse. geoff reader tried to help us and we were partway through examining the contents of the windows control panel - ho ho - when once again the staff at the spirit of gravity/green door store came to my rescue by digging out a mouse from some back room and we were able to play. we started more or less as the doors opened and it turned out that we were going to be LOUD. it's a while since we played through a P.A., and the temptation to be LOUD was irresistible, resulting in a floor-wobbling and trouser-flapping inferno of distorted guitar, squealing saxophone and sub-human bass through which the outlines of some marimba samples could dimly be discerned. at one point the guitar became so loud that i felt there was a great wind behind us, blowing us forward. we played for about an hour and despite everything people seemed to rather like it - they're tough, these brightonians. so, many thanks to all those who came - i recognised dave tribe and chris parfitt at least among them, and we all hope to see you again in the not-too-distant future.

november is postponed until january.

due to some hideous blockage in the ancient pipes which we use to transport meshmass to the orifice the november 2016 release is not yet available to the world. SHAME! (i hear you cry) - and right you are, we are ashamed, ashamed and disgusted. mostly we are disgusted because we have had to use wire coathangers straightened and then bent into hooks to cut through hideous clouds, crusts and gobbets of dried, congealed and rotting meshmass encrusted in our tubes. dear lord, the stench! but anyway, that's christmas for you, we mustn't grumble, everything will turn out lovely, just ask boris. november is so startlingly overdue that it has become next year already and we are nearly 2 months behind. if the meshmass backs up any further here we will all be drowned, or something. latest research indicates that despite extensive efforts to burn and otherwise destroy excess meshmass november still weighs in at a thoroughly swollen 2 hours 35 minutes and is hot and painful to the touch. we have diverted teams of technicians towards solving this problem without apparent success, and what is more we have to play a gig, this one at 'the spirit of gravity' in brighton, somewhere under the station in something that resembles a disused sewer. and on a thursday, too, in the middle of winter. there is no mercy for us. but we do not deserve mercy, only contumely and novelty headgear. eager (nay, desperate) subscribers must wait. november is postponed.