it is a crisis. everyone tells me. even the boy chancellor. so dreadful has it become that MESHMASS have split, due to what they describe as 'physical differences'. these may be that richard is very tall and peter rather fat. or it may be that half of MESHMASS has left the country. the result of that is that there is no longer any meshmass to be unrolled monthly and applied to sore patches. SO. instead we proudly announce the release of 'selected longer pieces', a thrillingly-titled compilation of (errr) selected longer pieces from 2012, available now on bandcamp. in strangely related news peter pick has posted a song called 'slack bay' on bandcamp under his own name, and threatens to post more unless you offer him money, which, clearly, you will not.

it has finally come to this. despite all our tunneling, mining, digging, scratching, burrowing and scraping, despite the laying of charges and the drilling of holes, despite efforts at inflation, expansion, psychometric enhancement, self-compression, despite appointing a commission and buying a larger and more commodious carpet - with pockets - despite our continued desperation and all that we have attempted or imagined we have finally and at last run out of space, due to the fact that we have expanded to the exact size of the universe and have thus filled up everything and even the possibility of anything else and it is no longer possible to produce the phenomenal quantities of brand new pulsing MESHMASS that we are used to. or that we used to. or that we have used........................................................................................... so we hereby announce, declare and aver that we are ceasing our monthly subscription-only releases at the end of this cycle, and we shall treat ourselves more as a special event in future, and less as a staple of the cultural diet. we stress that we are only doing this because our teams of dedicated engineers have assured us that MESHMASS will definitely catastrophise, is in fact in imminent danger of hooribulation and even possibly snud, leaving only a messy crater and a livid stench if we carry on producing material at the usual excessive rate in our endless pursuit of global growth designed to cover the expanding remuneration packages of our chief executives and other valued members of the board, our world renowned bribery schemes and also research. we have been authoritatively informed that we will implode under the pressure of our own gravity, creating an 'event horizon' from which not even light can escape, not of course that it would wish to, since it would want to be with us...................................... to be honest - as if such a thing were even possible - the situation has induced a major philosophical crisis in the hidden pseudo-brain (commonly known as the 'controlling function' when it is spoken of - rarely, and always in those hushed tones reserved for the truly revolting - ) that at least believes itself to make and use and inhabit and inform and generate and perhaps actually to be MESHMASS. what are we to say now about ourselves? our simple aesthetic formula of 'more', of quantitative extremism, of repetitive beats as prohibited by law, of play, of chance events, all this is threatened. members are starting to leave the country, limb by limb. a series of indicative votes has revealed that nobody approves of anything. but i diverge. i divert. i divulge........................................................................................................................................ so what does this mean to me, the average punter? absolutely bugger all, of course, since you could not care less about MESHMASS even if you were to take a course in mindfulness. but those people who were bold and charming and delightful and kind and well-intentioned and cultured and witty and good and above all of preternaturally acute aesthetic judgement enough or sufficiently to actually subscribe to the monthlymass will we hope find that meshmass fulfill their contract with them by delivering masses up to may. so where are we now, i wonder? we definitely did edit something out of somewhen at some point recently, and we will soon discover what it was and send it out for consumption or (as is more likely) to be ignored by our noble subscribers. .............................................................................................................................................................. the pearls which MESHMASS cast before them are so many that the floor is impassable, it is thick like the sea, like a lake of ballbearings, it is deep with scattered spheres and when they tread forward in that room they slip and slide, unable to balance on their pointy little trotters. like a ballerina on ballbearings i have been listening to 2017. there's a whole year of it. MESHMASS had a policy of excess. this is now over.

meshmass played at westgate chapel, lewes. they played with adam bushell (marimba, percussion) and james parsons (drumkit). this was very brave of them and very interesting for us all. it was a pleasure to see people from the brighton improvising musician's collective 'safehouse' in attendance, especially since they all had to travel there by bus. evidence of the night's performance can be found on the 'radio lewes' site http://www.radiolewes.org.uk/ www.radiolewes.org.uk and an extraordinary and rather illuminating video of part of the second set can be seen on vimeo at https://vimeo.com/292787308 we felt there was a good balance between structured material and improvisation with neither predominating, and it went rather well. people even clapped.

the terrible day approaches, almost as if time were moving steadily forward. james parsons (drumkit) and adam bushell (tuned percussion) are even now wondering what they have agreed to - and we can now reveal that it is this :- to play with MESHMASS for 2 hours in a room that smells of old carpets without having previously heard ANY of the material which is going to ooze unstoppably out of the computer. westgate chapel (which smalls of old carpets) was first used as a place of worship in 1662, on what they call the 'restoration of the monarchy', (not, for example the 're-imposition of dictatorship') of the and which describes not the reupholstery of some recumbent royals, or the retouching of some flaking makeup, but the reinstallation of undemocratic and centralised rule over the nations of britain. nothing to celebrate here, then, people, move along please. what particular denomination set up in westgate chapel then i cannot say, but most recently it was a 'unitarian' chapel, and unitarians are some sort of heretic of course, disbelieving the divinity of christ, which makes them rather like moslems, jews, or cynics. the 'west gate' to which the name refers is of course the west gate in lewes' town wall, which used to contain the prison. westgate chapel is almost certainly within and part of the town wall, which long preceeds it. it stands almost exactly opposite the masonic lodge, and is set back somewhat from the narrow section of the high street on which it stands called 'the bottleneck', opposite the twitten called 'pipe passage' where the town militia used to go and smoke, and where there was a pipe kiln, for baking tobacco pipes. the extensive history of religious dissent and heresy of course suits MESHMASS whose saxophonist studied such things to Ph.D. level and now spends much time playing the saxophone in churches around the area in an ongoing project called 'isolated churches', and whose guest drummer, james parsons, spends much time touring round churches on his bicycle and looking for ancient graffitti. adam will bring other things apart from his marimba. james will bring a drumkit. peter will bring at least 3 saxophones and a computer. richard will bring at least one guitar. i wonder which one? perhaps he will bring that thing that has no frets and which somewhat resembles an oud..... but perhaps not. indeed, we are not sure what is going to happen. how could we be? this is MESHMASS, after all.

meshmass are going to be playing a gig on the 29th of september in lewes at the westgate chapel, just near what was the west gate of the town wall, near keere street and pipe passage and other old things of historical interest such as ourselves. this performance will be relayed live on the radio (at least on 'radio lewes', which is probably only on the internet) and videoed as well for future reference. it will feature not only meshmass (the duo) and their various computers, tablets, saxophones, loopers and guitar-like objects but also the guest musicians adam bushell (tuned percussion) and james parsons (drumkit). we are looking forward to it. admission is free, and the tickets have been printed by an imbecile who ordered them with the name 'meshmash' on them, so i will have to track them down and incinerate them all - i cannot give out tickets with our name spelt wrong on them after all, it's pathetic. as ever, we will be playing music we have never played before, and three of the participants have never even heard, so almost anything might happen, but probably won't. doors open at 7:30, and you are all very welcome to come. it promises much - adam bushell will be playing the marimba, i hope, although he may bring a vibraphone instead. he is a very accomplished musician and has played with meshmass once before, but never in public. the same experience can be credited to james parsons, a longstanding member of brightonian improvisers 'bolide', and an inveterate participant in all manner of improvising collaborations including 'the bare springs'. we have long sought the opportunity to loosen up the edges of our computer-generated rhythms with human incompetence, and this is it, apparently. apart from that 'julymass 2018' has just escaped from its confinement and spread, virus-like across the universe, reaching as far as canada and even suffolk. it lasts nearly 2 hours and is really a very good month, it thinks. we shall report further at a later stage.

we, the unbelieved hereby declare februarymass 2018 'open for business' (and perhaps for other purposes less popular with our preposterous government). it contains 19 tracks ranging from the very short to the reasonably long (some say 'unreasonably long', but they are just spoilsports). 2 of them have vocals on, but the rest are free of any attempt to make sense. the whole shebang weighs in at 2 hours almost precisely. it is not a hebang. we recommend it to you. as for the wild excitements of our life in the sea of noise, i can announce quite truthfully that richard has been knocked off his bicycle by an errant mercedes and cracked his guitar finger as well as injuring his shoulderblade, his knifeblade and his razorblade. he now has to shave in a sling and wear a triangular warning sign round each neck. what do you mean, he only has one neck? oh. okay then. he only has one neck, but he stuck it out and a mercedes ran into it. so there is not likely to be much MESHMASS made in march - we already made some but had what we call 'technical difficulties' which resulted in everything shooting over to one side of the recording like a pile of beatles (have you ever noticed that? the psycho-acoustic effect of 'sergeant pepper's lonley hearts club band' (for example) is to generate the impression of little columns of beatles standing on each others' shoulders in wobbly heaps, banging drums and squeaking away in their charming falsettos like so many liverpudlian caryatids. we will not be hailed as universal geniuses for this achievement, and nor will we become the world's pre-eminent pop music producers, unlike the blithering fools who made that ghastly and overrated recording, but we do have half of december and a bit of february left over, so there will be enough MESHMASS to go round, never you fear. what's more, peter has sold several saxophones, but not enough as he still has some and threatens to blow through them. oh, woe is us. or should that be woe r us, since they have gone bancroft. bancroft? who is she? anyway, and regardless, MESHMASS is even now on its way to the deserving, rather like the blessings of the lord.

'well i never' we declare, each of us, as it is revealed to us that we are playing 'jazz', and that the place we are playing it is on radio 3's 'jazz now'. the question of genre is a particularly vexed and vexing one for the goo that is MESHMASS since we can honestly state that we have no idea what we are playing - only that it is MESHMASS and that there is always MORE of it and comes sometimes from the machines, or out of the vats, down pipes, and through the manipulation of electricity. we generally feel ourselves to be 'post-' something rather than 'alt-' anything, but this is the merest affectation, of course, except that in some sense we are not to be considered close enough to anything to be in the relationship implied by the prefix 'alt-' in regard to it. the closest i have recently come to being able to define it in any way is (in conversation, of course, and at someone else's suggestion) 'psychedelic'. this discovery was in reference to the so-called 'lewes psychedelic festival' which happened recently for i think the 3rd or 4th time without ever attempting to engage with anything that might be considered 'of lewes', (or indeed psychedelic, for all i know). it's certainly in any case not a festival since a (music) festival is an extended weekend of attempted debauchery in a muddy field. MESHMASS being IN lewes, and being (in lieu of anything else) 'psychedelic' to the considerable extent that people listening to it on acid get confused were nevertheless not at any time approached to play at the 'festival' and find themselves once more and indeed doubly bewildered. psychedelic is anyway and when used by me in particular, a quite loose term capable of swelling out to cover even MESHMASS, or at least parts of it, cotaining as it does the possibility of electro-acoustic semi-improvised instrumentals with occasional vocals and elements of dance, trance, techno, systems and ethnic musics also with reference to kwela and dub. of course it must be jazz if it is played on 'jazz now', but i have the feeling that it implies it was once something else. now, having not realised that it was (or had turned into) jazz, neither had i realised what it was before it became jazz, but i understand that it must have been something else. not jazz, then. but we must move with the times, albeit backwards in this case, and not stand in the way of regress.*[see footnote]~~~~~~ anyway, the essential thing to be stated is that whether or not we can be considered 'jazz' we are to be played on radio 3's 'jazz now' on monday 19th of february, to our considerable delight and surprise. the piece to be played is called 'altiplano' and is an entirely improvised duet. we are in fact and by inclination in terms of 'school' or 'skool' not old skool nor its presumed opposite new school but no skool. SO HERE IS OUR LESSON FOR THE WEEK, SOMETHING TO TATTOO ON OUR FOREHEADS. MESHMASS. NOT OLD SCHOOL BUT NO SCHOOL. ~~~~~~~~[footnote] "regress, i've had a few, but then again, too few to mention", after all. "non, je ne regress rien" is not appropriate in this case.