HOMEGAME OF WIS THINK
Not one to be put off by the rise of digital sales in music King Creosote has come up with a novel way of keeping music alive, as Nicola Meighan finds out
Audience members, however, have his blessing to share their personal copies.
If this appears to signify a royal volte-face from an artist and label who are stridently anti-MP3, (no Fence titles officially exist in this format, as the label believes it devalues our experience of – and engagement with – music), then it’s also one of the best ideas yet to rise from the online pop quagmire. Its celebration of community, intimacy, exclusivity, rarity and physical artefact – and the confidence that any bootleg will always sound much better live – knocks Radiohead’s pay-what-you-wish dirge for six. It’s both a high-five and a fuck-you to digital music. It’s a device that redraws the audience as artist. Mostly, though, it’s a brilliant idea that’s never, ever been done before. Has it? ‘I don’t think so, no,’ smiles Anderson. ‘It’s a first! Unless I’ve psychically tuned into something done by one of those
I t transpires St Andrews Woollen Mill has kind of saved the music business. While the global pop industry
bawls to the tune of millions relinquished to digital pilfering, a quiet revolution is being devised by a micro-indie label in Fife.
The mastermind is King Creosote – folk-rock vanquisher Kenny Anderson – and his vanguard enterprise is Fence: a much-loved DIY imprint and empire annual Anstruther musical brouhaha, Homegame, recently sold out in an hour. Fence’s nascent funding came from Anderson’s time spent peddling lambswool while working at the Woollen Mill. whose
His brainwave is called My Nth Bit
thus: during March’s of Strange in Umpteen Years, and it pans out Homegame (less a music festival and more an idyllic parallel realm), King Creosote will perform a brand new album, several times, to tiny audiences – on the proviso that each attendee must record the show. No one gets in without a dictaphone, mobile phone or recording device. KC won’t release these songs commercially.
24 THE LIST 21 Jan–4 Feb 2010