Hello its Andy here,your Dear Helmsman,Rex Random,Bossley,Casper Melchior,Animal Jesus,Lord Andrew English,Sir John Johns etc.Fancied giving you all a sort of state of the union address about the shape that APE is in right now.So,where to begin eager readers?,sheesh,lets just blunder in I guess?
Firstly I’m immensely proud of all the artists on the label.The music they have made or are making right now genuinely thrills me.My dream of building up a quality stable of thoroughbred musical giants is slowly gelling.Thats the thing you see,because its my label I dont have to take things on for purely commercial reasons,I only sign up the musicians that{selfishly} press my joy buttons.I’m not rich,just very particular.I cant stretch to stuff that I might feel would sell a few copies just for the sake of it,I have to LOVE LOVE LOVE each and every one of them.Wont take on catalogue to bulk up or use as ballast.Its personal,and surely thats the reason to run a record label.Proud dad me.
I’m also a sleeve art and packaging slut,cant get enough of it,the whole visual look of the object is in my genes and I have to be honest I dont know what gives me a bigger thrill,the sounds or the sleeves they come in.Its simply a big turn on for me to get involved in any way with the ‘look’ of a record.Downloads dont do it for me,I have to have the package for the visuals,the smell,the tactile experience,the ikon factor,the ‘thingness’ of it.Of course I realise you young beatniks want downloads in this Sputnik era and we try and supply them at a good competitive price.Someone recently asked should they buy APE artist downloads from APE or other suppliers,itunes,Amazon etc? Well,the simple answer is buy them from APE as the artist gets a bigger slice of the pie as we have to pay a fee to these other suppliers.Buying from us means there is more pie to go around.Let us know if you’d buy vinyl from us too,as its an area we’d like to go in more and more,starting with the Dukes and upward.
Dont stop sending in your demos O noisey ones,I am VERY behind in going through everything but it does all get listened to I promise.A word on this process.Its great to stub my musical toe on things you never knew were out there and I think thats how I found all of our artists.The simple “here is my recording,give it a listen”.Who could have predicted that i’d flip whats left of my wig for Veda Hille or Jen Olive or the Milks.They were all just pulled out of my mail box.Remember though,because APE doesn’t have the funds to finance big studio recording budgets,everybody has to have either paid for their recordings themselves or to have recorded them on their home set up or similar.Because we dont keep your recordings like most labels,we dont pay to bring them into existence.We lease them for a while,you own them.
If you’ve sent stuff in and havent heard back it means one of several things.I either didn’t get to it yet,or I just didnt get it once I played it{which doesn’t mean its bad,its just a personal taste thing}OR I thought it was really good but didnt want to take it on just to shift units coldly.Remember its got to float my little blue plastic boat,nobody else’s.Sometimes I get stuff thats rather good but I just dont know what to do with it.I did think we might see a few book manuscripts or art portfolios but next to nothing so far.Warning! I have a low threshold for fiction these days if you’re thinking,but we do seem to have gravitated by default to being a record label.
The coming year has some great stuff sighted off the port bow of the good ship APE,dont think i’m giving too much away by saying we’ll be working to bring you some wonderful XTC releases,the aforementioned sultry songstress from New Mexico Jen Olive’s album Warm Robot is ready to go.An album by the brain juddering Lighterthief,more perfect Pugwash and some things that are so secret that I haven’t even decided definitely on them myself yet.Maybe your music will be amongst them.As to be expected,for every project that gets released there seems to be a near miss with another group or artist that doesn’t pan out for some reason or another.Perhaps they didn’t really have enough material to make an album or they weren’t REALLY serious about a career in music,or perhaps ol’ finicky here just changed his mind.Keep sending though,you never know,but dont do it just for a joke.Incidentally I have fallen foul of a couple of people who couldnt take my suggestions to improve their album.I guess that meant they weren’t ready.
If anyones wondering “is Andy just making himself rich with all this?” the straight answer is no.In all the time that APE has been in existence I haven’t taken a penny from the company coffers,its all been left in to plough back into the next artists,the next projects.Of course I’ve made some money from my own artists royalty,and so have the majority of the other artists that sell enough to break even and onwards,so please support us and buy from this site whenever you can.We all appreciate it very much.
Although I cant run away and start up an airline business yet{HA!},I can promise you that we’ll do our utmost to bring you great work at a fair price for as long as we can.I couldnt have done this {oh dear i’m going all ‘oscar speech’ on your arses now}without the brilliant work of artist Andrew Swainson,my trusty captain Steve Young{and the lovely Gillie} and Jon who has to make sense of all money coming,or more usually,going,not forgetting all of our site maintainers and press and promo people.Cheers chaps,you’re brill.Mostly,thanks to you dear followers for helping to make this all possible.Onwards and upwards.
ANDY PARTRIDGE
Pugwash’s Thomas Walsh And Keith Farrell take us through the last of 3 podcasts to conclude their oratory for the last 5 tracks of their new compilation “Giddy”. Hear how Ape maestro Andy Partridge made his contribution to project and a tribute to that great psychedelic instrument the Mellotron.
APES Doctor Doolittle of music mangling, Lighterthief aka Stuart Rowe,has selected,squished and squeezed music and images together to give you a flavour of his latest EP TRICK PICTURE. He’s diced the three very different but very marvelous musical pieces into an odd medley and spliced up footage of Lighterthief the band, live and in rehearsal. The aural and visual equivalent of getting a free piece of cheese from a lovely lady in a supermarket.
