Even by his arcane standards, Mike Keane's third album under his ROYAL FAMILY & THE POOR banner was made in particularly distressing circumstances. Having left Factory and spent a relatively fruitless year in conjunction with the obscure Recloose label, Keane finally set up his own Gaia Communications label, using what little of his own financial resources he could muster. This almost broke him, and he ended up selling most of what he owned to raise a paltry £1000 to pay for the album sessions in and around Liverpool early in 1987.
Not surprisingly, Keane felt adrift in life at the time, so it's no surprise that the album's title "In The Sea Of E" reflects these rudderless feelings, and that, as he said at the time of the record's release: "I'm so much in debt now that it's ridiculous." With hindsight, his vision remained intact enough to run with this moniker rather than the album's working title, the overbearingly pretentious "Prostitutes From The Isle Of Glass." Thank goodness for small mercies, it seems.
The precarious circumstances surrounding the album's birth and the difficulties Keane had simply surviving at this time would inform the quixotic nature of the album's content. Indeed, it would ensure tracks like the stern "No More Compromise", the weird Pop Group-esque style burlesque of "Mr.Crow" and - especially - the unhinged, primal ranting of the supposedly 'meditational' chant "Gaia" and the nonsensical "When The Cat's Away" are tough to digest for the strongest of stomachs. "Wounded," meanwhile, revisits the dark malevolence Keane invested in earlier things like "Moonfish Is Here", but only adds further murk to the plot.
Nonetheless, despite this conflict (or because of it?), "In The Sea Of E" (with co-writing credits also featuring keyboard player and Bourbonese Qualk member Simon Crab) would also contain several of Keane's finest compositions.
For starters, "...Sea Of E" finds Keane's knack for opening his albums with enduring pop gems happily intact thanks to "Living Light" (even though lyrical input like "Living on the end of the world" and references to "streets of fear" lay his inner conflict bare), while the simply lovely "Time" and strident album closer "Feast Of The Supersensualists" pull similar victories from the jaws of despair.
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All these songs retain a strange dignity despite the conditions of their creation, but it's when Keane strips away everything that isn't entirely necessary that he really scores. To this end, witness both the serene organ confessional "Song For Freedom" (recalling the naked beauty Julian Cope could once conjur alone) and the even more minimal piano and flute-led heartbreak of "Honesty", which is without question the most moving thing Keane has ever recorded.
The four extra tracks tacked on at the end also harbour further glints of genius, with "When The Shadow Falls" and "Behind The Veil" from a post album 12" single proffering the brand of New Order -ish indie-electro (think a more mystical "State Of The Nation") that Keane was getting bloody good at and should have provided a tangible lifeline for him.
Typically, the reality proved much harsher. Keane borrowed a further £5,000 to build a home studio during 1988 only for his distribution and pressing deal to go down the tubes with the messy collapse of the Red Rhino label, resulting in Keane being declared bankrupt and having his gear repossessed. A would-be fourth album ("Songs For The Children Of Baphomet") went with it and Keane gave up music for many years.
Fantastically, since then Keane has fnally made some headway, launching his Gaia Communications website in the mid 1990s and finally securing a limited release for the "...Baphomet" project as the 20th century drew to a close. Aside from the re-release of these key three albums, I hear Boutique are about to release further new material come 2004. After all the hardships, the fact that there's people out there who still care is the least Mike Keane deserves. Unlike the real life one, his Royal Family are still relevant and should be afforded better than public ridicule.
A happy ending then? Fingers and toes crossed....
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