Jeff Keen

An album of unreleased music made by Jeff Keen, one of the UK's great avant garde artists. This is music found on cassettes in his studio after his death. It was made by Jeff (throughout the 1980s) using field recordings from his local amusement arcade: radio, TV, films, an Atari, a ZX Spectrum, a delay unit and a WASP synth. This is the first Jeff Keen album ever issued. Jeff Keen is one of the great undiscovered artists of our times. A missing link between the Dadaists, Cocteau, Warhol, Picasso, Jack Kirby, and just about anyone else you can think of. Jeff made art every day of his life. Art seemed to explode from him, and he worked across all mediums with boundless creativity and very much his own style. He developed his own graphic, visual, and spoken art language. The BFI (British Film Institute) have issued a 4DVD set of his films. His collages and paintings are currently being exhibited in Brighton, New York, and Paris. The Tate has started buying his work. He's now dead and his stock is quickly rising. The music on this release was made in and around the 1980s, using methods unique to him; in his ramshackle studio he'd have a mic, a radio, an Atari, a ZX Spectrum, a WASP synth, effects units and his own very unusual mind. He mixes field recordings with his very own language ("Bltazwurds") and takes on the characters he developed over his artistic life. This is very much an art/music release. The sound is a little like the industrial albums made in the late 1970s and 1980s, intense, odd, other-worldly, unpredictable. Includes notes by Jonny Trunk, and an important essay by David Toop and recollections by Will Fowler of the BFI, who worked closely with Keen.