Homegame report: King Creosote's Numerous Bits of Strange

If you had taken the trouble to scan this year's Homegame lineup, you may have sensed that someone or something was missing. That intangible lacking ingredient? None other than Fence co-founder Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote.

But the singer/songwriter wasn't away on any sabbatical. No, that would be preposterous - you couldn't stage a Homegame without its reigning monarch after all.

In reality he was busier than ever, performing a new album of material to a small room of fans seven times over the weekend - and that's when he wasn't springing surprise pub gigs, introducing The Bluebells, packing up PA systems and chatting to anyone who said hello. It's just that it wasn't publicised to all-comers, y'see.



UtR was lucky enough to find a space in one of his Sunday afternoon shows, also known as KC's 7th Bit of Strange. As Anderson explained to us (and to his mum and gran, this being Mother's Day) the idea is that the album is performed live and the audience members record it on whatever piece of gadgetry they have to hand (phones, cameras, etc, as long as it's unobtrusive).

Later in the day we catch up with Kenny in a brief moment of respite, and he tells us the concept arose through a growing sense of frustration with the regimented process of the industry. It was last year, watching his album sales decline while his press coverage grew, that he came up with the idea of a live album in the truest sense, and he sees Nth Bit of Strange as a means of giving his most dedicated fans something unique while bypassing the carefully dictated, somewhat artificial terms of an official album release.



We sat attentively through our session, and although the darkly humourous background visuals, delicious half-time oatcakes and one-off Homegame whisky blend certainly perked us up, it was the genuine quality of KC's songwriting and the impeccable musicianship of his band that really impressed. More than this, everyone in the room felt privileged to be part of it.



Our dictaphone, with battery rapidly failing, was switched on and off at the requested points, so in the spirit of the experiment, here are a couple of short snippets of what we managed to capture. (Be warned: the sound quality is truly dire - but maybe that's partly the point.)





A few hundred people recorded the sessions at the weekend, so expect more Bits of Strange to surface online in the coming days and weeks.