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A collaboration by Neil Campbell and Stewart Walden that reveals Neil's fascination with the German minimal techno imprint Kompakt. That influence and inspiration comes through in the repetitive loops employed. Surrounding the minimal approach is the itchy scratchy textures, loose piano refrains and the droney tones he's made his own from work with his former project Vibracathedral Orchestra.
Norman Records
He may be a master of droned out noise, but he's been flirting with club music on and off for the last few years, each full length hiding at least one dancefloor gem, and so Mr. Neil Campbell, ex of Vibracathedral Orchestra, now of Astral Social CLUB, at least on this here new 7”, is all about the tripped out psychedelic electronic groove.
But seeing as this is Neil Campbell, his idea of what constitutes dance music, or even electronica is WAAAAY different than most folks. Just check out the A side here. Maddeningly repetitive, a flurry of bleeps and glitches, swoops and burbles, locked into a relentless loop, the main 'beat' staying steady, while all around it a cloud of FX swirls and shimmers, some seriously druggy electro psych drone for sure.
The second track is all minimal house music, sort of. The main beat a stripped down pulse and squelch, with synthy basslines, and some haunting disembodied piano drifting over the top, making for a truly creepy mash up. Maybe one of our favorite Astral tracks ever!
As with all Trensmat 7” releases, the vinyl comes bundled with a cd-r, featuring both the tracks from the 7”, as well as three remixes from Richard Youngs, John Clyde-Evans and Magnetize, ranging from super spastic chopped up electronic madness, to spacey static drenched minimal house groove, to wild Bruce Haack like electronic experimentalism, playful and goofy and over the top.
Don't let all the talk of club music scare you away though, fans of recent Astral Social Club know all about Campbell's wild and off kilter take on dance music, which really ends up having more in common with tripped out psych drone and free noise weirdness than it does with -actual- club music.
Aquarius Records
Like oil-in-water captured rainbows, the elements of Neil Campbell’s Astral Social Club are beautiful slurry in his hands. This 7”, and accompanying CD of remixes, is a further contamination of whatever the initial ideas of the project might have ever been – sound transmuting into an ever-stirring organic/digital mammal. “Skelp” is an unfettered liquid-and-clock-parts blob, a gentle tirade against form that stomps like the neighbour’s teenage son. Sounding relatively unaffected in comparison, “Ginnel” is a sentient bed of glitter and sad piano. The track’s untouched notes are visible through the shiny tickertape, a locked vinyl groove continuously stapling reality into the melodic draught. Campbell should patent the improvisational acumen that this project has brought to brilliant daylight. There is a forest of drone doofuses out there who could use his help.
Remixes come from the Ireland’s Magnetize who gut “Ginnel” to propose a hybrid with Coil’s Love’s Secret Domain, Richard Youngs’ further mutation of “Skelp” and John Clyde-Evans’ stitch-by-stitch “Ginnel” reconfiguration. This is another generous package of Campbell and affiliates supplementary audio sinkings. 9/10
Foxy Digitalis
Neil Campbell has been doing the Astral Social Club thing for a few years now, and its a great combination of acoustic instrumentation and corrupt electronic fiddling. This single piles rhythms, drones, scrapes, sputs and screams into twin pyres, which are then set ablaze with all due glee. Very Social. As is the CD, which has some remixes by Richard Youngs, John Clyde-Evans and Magnetize. Smashing time!
The Wire
Even better is the Trensmat release, seeing the project as some sort of continuation from tracks Stewart Walden started creating in 1992. This one’s more obviously devoted to rave confusion and UFO pants – though “Ginnel” is fairly passive, grey-sounding radio transmissions with piano, “Skelp” is like a Binky shoved between your grinding teeth. The included CDR features the two tracks from the 7” and three remixes; space-funk interference by Richard Youngs, minimal tech-glitch action by Magnetize, and chirpy John Clyde-Evans lie down on top of the originals and bring out new layers of complexity previously unheard.
Dusted Magazine
More distant intermissions from Campbell’s micro cosmic universe in his continuance for enlightenment by means of pure sound.
‘Slelp’ the opening cut is busy, the sounds initially hit you like a sheet of glass such is the blurring currency, an undulating cortege of dancing diode manipulations that on first acquaintance has you imagining some sort of multi textured snowstorm of binary interference, though given patience and allowing for your head space to acclimatise soon translates as a head flipping hypnotic swirling cascade of sumptuously woven celestial drone swathes.
’Ginnel’ is hitherto more obtuse and abstract in texture and sound, the ominous hypno- pulsing hums that open the cut are soon accompanied and bathed by a solemnly sweet and delicately dainty piano braid that’s threaded by slender scratches of distant white noise halos that steadily but surely begin to gather mass and density and consume all around.
In the hands of Richard Youngs ’Skelp’ is stripped to the core, re-assembled and tinkered and enshrined within a seriously dislocated and fractured futuro funk chassis that at times had us recalling a particular chilled Einstuerzende Neubauten collaborating on some strange mutant cosmic dub workout with Play Dead. ’Ginnel’ on the other hand is put through its paces not once but twice with Magnetize reducing it to its barest form and harvesting a droning but decidedly (for them anyway) light slice of warped and wonky uber droid funkiness while John Clyde Evans’ renders the original unrecognisable with his wilfully flipped scrape, stutter and squelch motifs which frankly sound like an Early Learning Centre resource being impishly abused by a field location recording team made up of members from EAR, Radiophonic Workshop and Vernon Arts Lab.
It’s all essential of course.
Losing Today
