radio free midwich

minced sacred cow on the menu at the astral social club

Astral Social Club – Squeegee Anthem #1 (3″ CD-r, Sheepscar Light Industrial, SLI.015, edition of 50 or download)

Astral Social Club – Metal Guru/Moonage Daydream (limited edition 7” transparent blue vinyl with optional extra CD-r, Must Die Records, MDR 030)

Astral Social Club – Electric Yep (limited edition vinyl LP, Trensmat, TR038)

Regular readers will know RFM is a wholly positive place.  This is not accidental, it is a matter of policy.  Apart from on very rare occasions, we like everything we write about.  We don’t like everything we hear, of course, but those in that unfortunate situation are dispatched politely and, if appropriate, constructively by email.  I’ve written at length about how bad reviews are inappropriate down here in the no-audience underground, almost a type of category mistake, but they also bore me.  A bad review usually reveals more about the critic than the artefact discussed.  They are used as an opportunity for self-aggrandizing blow-hards to preen and strut in front of other pompous know-it-alls.  Picture them all chortling, wallowing in schadenfreude.  It’s as edifying a spectacle as watching an alpha male ape scratching his arse then inviting the rest of the troop to smell his finger. As a response to creative endeavour it is pathetic.

That said, I will occasionally pay attention if a sacred cow is being dragged to the abattoir.  If someone says ‘have you seen that Citizen Kane?  What a crock of shit!’ or ‘you know what I can’t stand?  The Renaissance,’ then, if I’m in the mood, I’ll stick around for the explanation.  As long as the argument is heartfelt (and thus not mere cock-waggling), cogently structured and well written then a little iconoclasm is healthy and can be entertaining.  Accepted ‘truths’ of critical consensus needed to be poked with a stick once in a while.

The work of Neil Campbell invites such a consensus.  With an all encompassing pedigree stretching back to the 1980s and his well established solo project, Astral Social Club, garnering universal adulation one might be tempted to use the word ‘iconic’ in its daft, modern, near-meaningless sense.  His oeuvre is certainly haloed in gold.  He couldn’t be more of a holy bovine if he sat around mooing, covered in purple handprints.  I presume that by now you have guessed where I’m going with this.  It isn’t a comfortable ride I’ve embarked on here – Neil and I have been friends for over a decade – but he has loudly, within my earshot and on several occasions proclaimed that he would rather read a bad review than a good one.  I don’t know why, but I assure you that is what he said and today I’m going to take him at his word.

My own adoration of Neil’s music began with Vibracathedral Orchestra back in fin de siècle Leeds and continued unabated until a couple of years ago when a new new sound started to dominate the Astral Social Club vibe: hard gurning, stomping, biomechanical electronics.  The shimmering psychedelia that fey Vibra-era fanboys like me had come to expect was being mulched with shredded tyres.  If the new sound had an odour, it would smell of melting plastic: hot, choking, artificial.  At first I thought, well, I can’t fault the guy for exploring a new direction it’s just a shame it ain’t for me.  Likewise with the live performances.  I saw many promising starts devolve into overlong, speaker-melting exercises in pushing everything up to ‘11’ but glancing around at the grins and blissed out expressions of my fellow audience members I took refuge in the same thought: shame it ain’t for me.  I didn’t get really annoyed until Squeegee Anthem #1.

This 3” CD-r in an insta-sell-out edition on Sheepscar Light Industrial (still available for download) was the last straw.  The percussion is plodding, the guitar embarrassing and the grating electronics seemingly lifted from an entirely different recording, so little connection do they have with anything else going on.  It was a half-baked, soggy-bottomed disgrace or, if this really was being presented as a finished work for public consumption and not a joke, tragic evidence of a once titanic artist descending into senility.  Has, I wondered, Neil become the Willem de Kooning of psychedelic noise?  Suspecting this would be a minority opinion I kept it to myself (telling only Daniel Thomas who was most amused).  And so it proved.  I looked on slack-jawed as the reviews heralded an ‘instant classic’.  What were they hearing? Bleed through from Neil’s all conquering back catalogue and reputation?  Or perhaps they were actually *cough, splutter* enjoying it?  I was flummoxed.

Deciding that maintaining a dignified silence might be the best course of action, I kept quiet about another one or two Neil-related projects that came my way but, at the recent Skullflower show, the man himself pressed these two vinyl releases on me.  Trying to make sense of them both has got me bubbling again.  Here’s the good news: the 7” single, released by the increasingly impressive Must Die Records, is pressed on transparent blue vinyl and is thus a near perfect way to present music.  What a beautiful object.  The cover illustration by Neil’s son Magnus is charming too.  The album, courtesy of Trensmat, contains one track that is really good and has a jolly photograph of a brick on the cover.  And, er…, well… that’s it.  I suppose the tracks on the 7″ may not be very interesting but at least they are short.  The album, as a whole, feels like taking a cheese grater to your soul.

Much has been made of the influence of Neil’s interest in techno.  Sadly the beats which thump ineffectually under some of these tracks are the main reason why it sounds so tethered and inert.  Techno is a sinuous, nuanced, silver-eyed genre that I have loved unswervingly my entire adult life.  It is by far my favourite form of music outside of the no-audience underground.  Thus to see it mentioned in the same paragraph as this lumpen nonsense makes my heart feel all grey and dry.

*Long pause.  Theatrical sigh*

Why am I saying these things out loud?  Why jeopardise a friendship over something as inconsequential as a blog post?  Why swim so perversely against the tide?  I can’t imagine a single person reading this agreeing with me and that isn’t a pleasant thought.  I don’t even want anyone to agree with me: I don’t want Neil to change what he is doing to suit me, nor am I trying to convince those that love his recent stuff that they are wrong to do so.  I recognize the essentially subjective nature of these judgements and if, say, Norman Records want to describe an LP I struggled to get through as ‘an absolute cracker’ then on what basis could I argue?  I suspect the fact that most of this was written between the hours of 2am and 4am nursing a baby with chickenpox might explain the frazzled tone.  I also suspect that it doesn’t amount to much more than the wailing of a disillusioned fanboy, sick out of love because his hero has moved on to a new sound he neither likes nor understands.  See, I told you that bad reviews are mainly about the reviewer.

Normal service, in the selfless joy-casting style RFM is known for, will be resumed in the following posts by Joe and Scott.  I’m off to take a hot bath in mentholated ego-solvent before returning to the task.  Oh, and in case any loyal subjects wish to spring to Neil’s defence, no need.  The fella can look after himself.  I ran this past him before posting and he responded thus:

How long have you known me? Do you think I give a shit? Publish + be Damned I say!

…so there you go.

ASC’s own bigcartel page

ASC on Sheepscar Light Industrial

ASC on Must Die Records

ASC on trensmat