February 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
Neil Campbell has been around for quite some time, knocking around and making experimental music since the mid-80s in various guises, notably as the founder of the improv ensemble Vibracathedral Orchestra, but also via numerous collaborations with the likes of Oren Ambarchi, Ashtray Navigations, Early Hominids, Richard Youngs… it’s a long list and I could go on. As with so many underground artists, he’s remained underground and simply got on with doing what he does, and what he does is varied, even over the duration of a single release.
Occultics is a prime example. It’s an instrumental set containing five tracks spanning seventy minutes. It’s largely ambient and electronic in design, but also incorporates guitars and (programmed) percussion, and as such is quite varied.
The CD, available in a limited run of 200 sheds little light on anything, the digipack’s inner flap containing nothing but a picture of the artist, spectacled and sporting a mottled grey loose-fitting knitted jumper. It’s certainly not your standard moody artist shot. But then, there’s nothing much that is standard about Neil Campbell or this album.
‘Tintinnabulum’ is pitched as a ‘nu-skool ARC hardware jam’, and locks into an uptempo Krautrock groove from the outset and pumps along with its insistent monotony for the best part of nine minutes. But toward the end, the beats evaporate and woozy, scuttling drones skitter like frenzied crabs all over the scene and it’s altogether less pleasant – but at the same time, the discomfort it induces is well executed.
The album’s forty-one minute centrepiece could actually have been an album in its own right. ‘Sines’ is a quintessential longform ambient work, a multi-faceted, many-layered journey constructed from a latticework of drones and hums. As the title suggests, it’s an exploration of Sine waves. It’s gentle, and quite soporific – and works well in a darkened room accompanied by candlelight and a whisky.
Around it, the twelve-minute ‘Cresting’ is a slow-swirling pool of slow-eddying tidal waves, where guitar and machines melt together in a psychedelic haze – kind of like The Doors jamming without Jim (imagine how much better they could have been without all that pretentious ‘poetical’ shite drawling all over, eh? Well, if you do ever imagine, this could well be the soundtrack).
‘Miragle’ is a shimmering slow-fade finale, a fuzzed-out conglomeration of drones and rippling synth piano work with a low-key beat simply holding tempo. It’s pleasant, and if that sounds like faint praise, it’s really not. Sometimes you need nice, and Occultics is pleasantly undemanding and most welcome in its tranquillity.
AA
Aural Aggravation 