Obscure cult Liverpudlian Mike Keane's rambling, 25-year 'career' has been blighted by everything from heroin addiction, acute fiscal destitution and his interest in Occultism to unimaginable press ridicule. That he's still with us after all this time shows the kind of resolve must of us couldn't even begin to entertain.
But despite the dismissive attitude of most reviewers down the years, much of what Keane has achieved with THE ROYAL FAMILY AND THE POOR is worthy of rediscovery, and it's heartening to find LTM'S offshoot label Boutique honouring his waywardly fascinating muse by releasing extensive re-issues of three of the only four albums he's managed to record during these two and a half decades.
As has often been the case in Keane's bizarre story, the reasons why he took from 1978 to finally get "Temple Of The 13th Tribe" together by 1984 are prosaic and far too convoluted to go into here. Suffice it to say that to anyone with any knowledge of Keane's modus operandi, it won't surprise that prior to recording the album - only achieved thanks to much cajoling from Factory's Tony Wilson - he'd decided to quit music and was occupied walking the 100 miles of Canterbury's Pilgrim's Way, living in a tent and surviving on a diet of nettle soup and fruit.
Actually, four of the tracks pre-date the album's main sessions (with Peter Hook at the controls), and they offer a glimpse of what might have been had Keane gone with Stevo's offer of a deal with the Some Bizarre label. Opening track "I Love You (Restrained In A Moment)" - with its' distant acoustic guitar and descending Joy Division bassline - and the equally moody and pretty "The Dawn Song" are collaborations with China Crisis's Gary Daley and won't disappoint anyone who loved early CC stuff like "African And White" and "Christian".
Meanwhile, "Moonfish Is Here" and "Motherland" are the products of a further session (this time with The The's Matt Johnson) and these are equally striking. The former (which would resurface, reworked, as "British Empire" on the Factory/IKON "Shorts" video) is strange, subterranean and superb, with nightmarish visions and Eastern motifs cutting across the funky bass undertow, while "Motherland" is vocodered, but not without great rhythmic quality.
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The majority of the Hook-produced tracks veer towards a relatively commercial electro-pop pulse, not surprisingly akin to New Order. Although I'd harbour reservations about several tracks ("Voices" and "Ritual 1" spring to mind) there are some cool things like the mournful, downbeat pop of "Discipline" and the snakily propulsive funk of "Dark And Light". Its' dislocated feel and 'Lord Of The Flies' imagery comes on like a precursor of the sound Campag Velocet briefly shone with several years back.
This expanded edition of "Temple Of The 13th Tribe" also includes The Royal Family And The Poor's sextet of tracks from the "Factory Quartet" double album from late 1980. Featuring an entirely different line-up including one Nathan McGough (later Happy Mondays manager), these tracks were roundly critically panned at the time, but funnily enough don't sound too bad now. Sure, the three instrumentals earn their tag "Dirge", but while "Vaneigim Mix" and "Rackets" have a murky militancy and ranty polemical feel that recalls the Pop Group and early PIL, they do come out intact. Ish.
It's undoubtedly been a long, strange and harrowing trip for Mike Keane, but it's good to see that after 25 years of strife, his reclusive muse is being shoved unceremoniously into the spotlight. Embracing rather than repelling, it's a fine entry point for the previously uninitiated.
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