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.