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Best Kept Secret is the brainchild of a solitary music and book geek hailing from the deep (and miserable) heart of Northeastern Italy.
Being a hopeless computer illiterate, owning no pc at the time and thus having no idea cd-burners had been taking over the planet for quite some time already back then, in the Spring of 1998 he started releasing music on the good old cassette format, to try and spread the word about home-recorded, d.i.y. pop music.
It did not take him long to realize that tapes were rather outdated and old-fashioned, but, over the next eight and a half years, Best Kept Secret ended up releasing over one hundred cassettes nonetheless and is still going today.
None of this would have happened were it not for the consideration and support from many open-minded bands/artists, who proved that there are still people who are in it just for the music, and the help from two invaluable friends, Silvia Pasquariello (Pasquariello), who most of the time takes care of the artwork for Best Kept Secret cassettes, and Chris McFarlane (IndiePages), who got us started by providing the songs for the first BKS release ever and kept us going with all the technical web-related support, filling the void of our extreme incompetence.
To all of them, and to anyone out there who over the years has picked up a copy of a Best Kept Secret tape and/or written about the music on the label or the label itself or has otherwise expressed interest in what we do, goes my deepest and most sincere gratitude.
Latest News:
May 2008: This time of the year marks Best Kept Secret’s tenth anniversary and, needless to say, the best way of celebrating the recurrence is to put out some new music to show that we are hanging in there against all odds.
So, here we are with three new tapes by, respectively, Rambling Nicholas Heron, a Swedish band playing a mellow and inspiring folk-ish and bluesy pop, Churrus, straight from Brasil (the band’s line-up includes former members of Multisofa, who also were on Best Kept Secret a while ago), who perform some excellent power-pop, and School Police, from Austin, TX, with their pop madness.
Lots (and I mean exactly that) more is due out very soon, so don’t forget to pay us a visit in the coming months.
December 30th: Just in time to end the year in a true lo-fi fashion, here we are again with two new tapes featuring excellent d.i.y., home-recorded pop music, one by a California band, called Camera Shy, the other by a one-man project out of London, named New Year Ruse.
August 30th: Out now are four new tapes, focusing on dreampop/shoegaze/post-rock, by Theresa Nova, Mechanism For People, Inchworm and Translations.
Theresa Nova and Mechanism For People hail both from France. The former is a home-recording project behind which is a young singer-songwriter who takes inspiration from such bands as Cocteau Twins an Slowdive to write tender songs with personal and insightful lyrics, whereas the latter makes a majestic wall of sound made of fuzzed out guitars and electronic noises. This tape features five songs, but more new recordings are already being made available for streaming by the band on their MySpace page.
Translations is yet another solo home-recording project and is the brainchild of a young lad from Texas, whose music is some sort of chronicle of his wandering through thoughts and feelings inspired by everyday life. It’s spacey, dreamy, sometimes mysterious and always inspiring.
Finally, the Inchworm tape is a posthumous release featuring the last three songs ever recorded by this band from New Zealand before calling it quits. Part of the lineup were Scott and Rob, who shortly after relocated to London, England and started Girlinky, who, unfortunately, are now also no more. The members are now making music calling themselves Grok. The debut cd under the new moniker is in the works. Here you can check out what they sound like.
April 25th: Things have gone way out of hand at work over the past few months and I owe an apology to anyone who has dropped us a line and found themselves waiting for ages for me to get back to them. It does not look as though things will improve in the near future, but I will do my best to keep track of everything and everybody.
The good news, though, is that I was able to find the time to put out a new batch of tapes to celebrate Best Kept Secret’s ninth birthday in a proper manner.
We’ve got excellent lo-fi pop from Sweden (Valentine Academy, Robert Church And The Holy Community), power/acoustic pop from the Falkland Islands (Remote Sound - well, the core members of the band have now relocated to Bristol, England, but they were still living in the lands down under when they first got in touch with us a while ago and the tracks featured in their release were recorded over there), a new pop sensation from the U.S. (Bears) and charming electronic sounds from the U.K. (David Newlyn).
Five new tapes in all for our birthday, to bear witness of what we have tried to achieve over the years, in terms of both the range of pop sounds to be made available and the music’s place of origin.
We’ve come a long way since we kicked things off in 1998 and we hope to keep the ball rolling for a while still.
Many thanks to all those who have supported us along the way by purchasing tapes, choosing our label to release their music or simply by letting us know they believed that what we do still makes some sense after all; to those whom we are still in touch with and those we have lost track of.
Due to the aforementioned reasons, things in the future are likely to be slower than they used to be, but, please, do pay us a visit every now and again.
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