Neil Campbell

I felt like listening to some master "drone" material today, the mood fell upon me whilst I was picking out stuff to play at work and I plumped for (amongst other things) a CDr by Neil Campbell. I have had this release for a while now and love it dearly but because of the barely visible print on brown card which then has been spray painted I have no idea of the title, the label, the track titles or the year of release. Admittedly my eyesight is not that good but this "sleeve" is infuriating!
I reckon I have had this CDr for about seven or eight years now and it is always a pleasant listen. Track One sounds like an Astral Social Club backing track. Work In Progress. Apart from track 4 the whole CDr has a "Work In Progress" feel about it, anyway, track one has dronal keyboards throughout. In the old days (1980's b.l. ... before laptops) to get the ideal "drone" I used to push a piece of lead ( electric lead / cable ... not lead as in the stuff that is nicked off church roofs) under a key to hold down a note on a cheap keyboard. Holding the note, then I would manipulate the sound through effects or multi-layer on the 2-Track / 4-Track whatever was available Track.
Neil does this on this CDr alot. Tracks 1 - 3. Track One has a synthetic dripping sound throughout, track two is a short "tangerine dream" style blast, whereas track three is back to the drone with analog synth knobbery supreme. The sound is very claustrophobic. not ideal for headphones or i-pods etc. I find this CDr is best played with windows, doors wide open and to move around a bit so the full sound can be experienced with "outside" interference. Traffic, birds, the general public passing by - that kind of thing.....
Track 4 is a beautiful piece of Organum like drone. Heavy Industrial, scraping and bowing of noise. Classic and complete.

What this album is.....its' availability etc, I do not know. It is up there in the Campbell arsenal with the "Sol Powr" album...perhaps some label will re-release to make it a common item for musical drone collectors????

Essential.

Pictures:
1: CDr Card Sleeve.
2: CDr.