“A new set of studio recordings from the latter day version of the A Band. As noted in previous musings (check out David Keenan's article on The Wire site) on this collective, the A Band follows in the tradition of the People Band, Scratch Orchestra, and Portsmouth Sinfonia (and oddly enough, Calgary's own Street of Crocodiles), ditching traditional notions of instrumentation and ability for a more disparate and unique flow of ideas and sounds. Standard instruments (piano, clarinet, electric guitar) sit alongside makeshift/found percussion, weird electronics, and vocal utterances, the elements shifting in and out of focus, often seeming as if players are walking in and out of the studio at their leisure, adding something then moving along. The first track is largely acoustic, featuring a swirling marriage of its rag-tag odd and ends, while the second main track (actually the third) features a much different feel and heavier usage of electric sounds. Totally bizarre, singular, and unlike anything else on Bug Incision. Treated white card sleeves with colour & b&w stick-on art, edition of 119.” – BI. 

New album featuring alchemically re-worked live and studio jams from Neil Campbell (A-Band/Vibracathedral Orchestra et al). Lucid electronic minimalism combines with a feel for elaborate technicolour architectures, illuminated circuitry and the application of ritualised trance moves to punk primitive drones for a series of gorgeous psychedelic constructs. The sister album to the vinyl only Super Grease, also on Important.

Limited edition of 500 copies on blue vinyl featuring alchemically re-worked live and studio jams from Neil Campbell (A-Band/Vibracathedral Orchestra et al). Lucid electronic minimalism combines with a feel for elaborate technicolour architectures, illuminated circuitry and the application of ritualised trance moves to punk primitive drones for a series of gorgeous psychedelic constructs. The sister album to the Neon Pibroch CD, also on Important.

Hand-numbered edition of 50 copies 3” CD-R, part of La Station Radar’s ‘Fake Tape Series’.  More electro-raunch from the duo of Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club et al) and Paul Walsh, recorded live at Batley swimming baths in July of 2009. Aggressively nuanced electronics that combine chuffing rhythms with hotwired crackle and amorphous bass tones. Somewhere between the more ‘Industrial’ stylings of early Kluster/Conrad Schnitzler and Astral Social Club?

Hand-numbered ‘bootleg’ edition of only 30 copies reissue of what was originally released in a run of 32 copies on American Tapes in 2000. Universal Indians were the trio of John Olson (Wolf Eyes), Aaron Dilloway and Gretchen Gonzales, playing hardcore free jazz/psych from the early 90s. This disc collects a bunch of live jams where they are joined by Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Astral Social Club et al), some of which are variously fucked with in post-production by Olson. It’s a fantastic collection, moving through violent hovering drone work ala Vibracathedral with junk percussion, wailing atonal foghorn jazz moves ala Borbetomagus and classic twonked string confusion. This still sounds great and only confirms what an amazing time the 1990s were for underground music. Highly recommended. 

Another fantastic archival release of potent pre-UK underground DIY from the vaults of Neil Campbell. Redemption Inc were a post-ESP Kinetic group that Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Astral Social Club et al) led during the mid-to-late 80s and that featured MS Turner, Caroline Gormley, Stewart Walden of The Strolling Ones/Well Crucial/A Band et al and Andrew Watson. Redemption Inc were heavily influenced by Whitehouse, Throbbing Gristle and early SPK with barracking vocals over percussion and synthesizer but with a less ‘sophisticated’ sound than their Industrial forbearers, combing the crude no-fi approach of the UK tape underground with a high energy confrontational stance. Campbell seems to have been the firebrand influence on the pre-underground, dragging them kicking and screaming out of their avant Church Of England lunacy and into more transgressive punk-primitive realms, complete with lyrics like “The rhythm of love is the rhythm of power!” Uh, okay! But this is a blast, two live sets from the group that fill a whole bunch of speculative holes, recorded in Amesbury in December 1986 and at a punk festival in Dundee in January 1987. Can’t get enough of this archival UK underground stuff. Highly recommended. 

Inspired pairing that pitches a side each from Neil Campbell’s kinetic Industrial trance unit Astral Social Club with Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat’s hypnotic toy orchestra Tomutonttu. Campbell’s side has a heavy automating/Nurse With Wound feel to it with Steel Dream Of The Marching men rhythms dissolving in corrosive F/X that feedback all over themselves to the point that it feels like Terry Riley remixing Neu w/an eternal Acid motorik sound. Anderzen’s side is the perfect compliment, extended fluttering drones over helium melodies that feel as if they could have been beamed from the most candy floss areas of James Ferraro’s brain. Edition of 300 copies w/150g colour vinyl, hand-stamped labels and full colour silkscreen sleeves by Alan Sherry of SIWA. 

A “heavy session players” release from Phil Todd’s Ashtray Navigations, with the A side featuring the duo  line-up of Todd and Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club/Vibracathedral Orchestra) and the flip a trio jam with Mel Delaney and Phil Legard (Xenis Emputae Travelling Band). A side has a great Velvets play two-chord infinities feel while all sorts of astral fireworks explode just beyond the horizon. Very beautiful and with a slow-motion euphoric appeal that is highly addictive. The trio side hews closer to Faust’s “Krautrock” but with a semi-erased/subliminal edge. Packaged in the usual classy Medusa style with a two-colour silkscreen fold-out cigarette box style sleeve. 

New limited self-released CD-R from Neil Campbell’s (Vibracathedral Orchestra/ESP-Kinetic et al) solo Astral Social Club guise, here with a series of recordings scored for electronics and guitar recorded in October 2011. Campbell is increasingly moving towards the kind of amalgam of psychedelic electronics, euphoric techno and heavy meta minimalism of Pita circa Get Out and this has got to be his most addictive and sensually disorientating passes through accumulated strata of angel tone to date, with a heavier guitar aspect that is particularly satisfying. Parts of this almost sound like Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” re-tooled with circuit-bending drones, ticker-tape melodies and flashes of pure white light that you would almost swear were coming straight from Heaven. This is massively adrenalized loop-minimalism that accrues layers of ecstasy on every pass to the point that it becomes one huge pulsating energy form that just keeps on keeping on.

Fantastic and very limited LP that documents another side of Neil Campbell’s legendary early-80s post-Industrial DIY punk/synth outfit ESP Kinetic. ESP were the duo of Campbell (better known these days for his work with Astral Social Club/Vibracathedral Orchestra/Richard Youngs et al) and Andrew Watson and although they looked closer to the Virgin Prunes they sound more like, well, if you can imagine an ultra-low grade rehearsal cassette from the Velvet Underground circa “Ocean” with Cale on organ playing duo takes on Pop Group, Public Image Limited and Throbbing Gristle material then you’re somewhere in the conceptual vicinity. The A side is made up of home recordings from 1982/83 and these are more minimal keyboard-led drone-outs cut-with caveman rhythms and enough vertical spectra to launch Vibracathedral proper. The second side, with live excerpts from various gigs across the space of 1984/85, has a little bit more ‘aggro’ with walls of scummy electronics, the hallucinatory use of tapes, obsessive hectoring vocals and incessant skullcracking rhythms coming over like an evil basement take on Silver Apples – does that make em a UK Suicide? Either way this is fantastic and yet another step towards a full understanding of the convoluted evolution of the contemporary UK underground. 

New album from Neil Campbell’s (Vibracathedral Orchestra/ESP Kinetic et al) solo Astral Social Club guise: Generator Breaker runs the gamut of Campbell’s contemporary strategies but w/a heavy emphasis on the euphoric/devotional trancefloor works. Once more the spirit of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” inexplicably hovers over the music, w/weird extensions/visions of that classic psych track’s rhythmic ‘logic’, albeit usurped by beams of technicolour electricity. Some of the music has the same microtonal detail married to vertical ascensions aspect of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof while at points it sounds like a more ‘metal’ take on Kluster/Cluster. Either way, it’s another great one.