Various Artists
Album: Home Volume 3
Label: Rash
Tracks: 20
Website: http://rashrecords.co.uk

#This is not a review, there are times where you need to step back and let the label tell you what's going on. Read and then follow the link above to find out more about the artists involved#

The Home series of albums showcases songs from a community of independent artists who work mostly from home and post their music online to an appreciative audience. The tunes we choose are typically warm, toasty & melodic - and come more from the heart than from any huge hankering for fame and fortune.

At Rash Records our mission is to bring the music from this cottage industry to a wider audience. Our compilations aim to convey that same sense of wellbeing we all feel on returning home from a long trip - to bring that same smile to our faces and spring to our step. But what is our business model? How can we as a label make money by offering you these albums - to enjoy and share with your friends - as an outright gift? We don't. We give our time freely because, like so much of this music, Rash Records is our labour of love.

For Volume 3 of Home we're proud to have the involvement of Tom Robinson. Many of the tunes on Volume 2 turned out to have already been played on BBC 6 Music by Tom thanks to his his BBC Introducing shows Fresh On The Net. So this time around we recruited him as co-curator from the outset. Tom hand-picked a huge list of his favourite songs & artists from Fresh On The Net, which Johnno Casson (the artist known as Snippet) has whittled down to a manageable albums worth.

Since compiling Volume 3 we've learnt that the radio show they came from is to finish at the end of March 2012. Tom himself will move to a new live Saturday evening slot with a much wider audience and playlist. Fresh On The Net meanwhile moves online as non-profit music blog. So we hope this collection of gems will serve as a reminder of the gratifying variety of new music those legendary late-night radio shows have introduced to the listening public over the past four years.

Make no mistake, this is quality music - but not from the mainstream or from some hip suburb of Berlin or Brooklyn. It's music made on a human scale in a community that is everywhere and nowhere - a community of the human heart. Listen and enjoy. Home really is where the heart is.

Neil King