Displacement Activity Terminal 2019
(Chocolate Monk - choc.466) CDR $8.00
Electronic plod and clang from an exclusive perv lair in West Yorksire, a secret location chosen as optimum for the recording of finely churned euphoric sonics. Numbered edition of 60
Enge Chaleur Telegraphique
(Chocolate Monk - choc.419) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two of Chocolate Monk’s favorite duffers got together for the label’s 25-year birthday bash at Cafe Oto for this long-distance psychic hook-up. These very old friends, one globetrotter involved in international espionage, the other a suburban West Yorkshire housewife, filled the venue with the sounds of far-flung places, piano, electronics, rambling, etc. Disorientation never felt or sounded so sweet. A Daktari for free sound adventurers. Numbered edition of 60
NEIL CAMPBELL / STUART CHALMERS
Frog Dreaming Skull
(Chocolate Monk - choc.433) CDR $8.00
Hurtling toward the horrors of their biological selves, these two aging Yorkshire-based freaks follow up In the Vicinity of the Reversing Pool with an altogether more organic, rolling affair. Chalmers ladles on his signature stuttering tape loops and even dusts off his old zither, while Campbell is in a definite Vibracathedral vibe zone on guitar, percussion, toy piano, violin, electronics and voice. A continuously evolving piece, from the opening strum and stroke that will get your chakra shimmering to a gurning sonic joy mess full stop. Listener, you must struggle with glorious reality! Edition of 60
NEIL CAMPBELL / RICHARD YOUNGS
How The Garden Is
(Harpendon - HP271) LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Campbell and Youngs have recorded together in various forms (most notably A Band and the Durian, Durian LP), but How the Garden Is is their first true collaboration. Recorded over two days in the spring of 2000, this LP is mainly acoustic, hovering in, around, and between Youngs's meditative solo work and the density of Vibracathedral Orchestra ... stripped bare and built up around itself. Edition of 300. Jacket is near-mint with beginning of two-inch split on top edge of jacket; vinyl is mint. Includes 2-inch insert.
Itinerant String Section
(Freedom From) Used CDR $5.00
More minimalistic than Astral Social Club, and a bit introverted.
Lump Of Stuff
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.318) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Back in 2008, one-time Nipple Erector and The Pogues’ most handsome got together in North London with Vibracathedral’s dad about town and former A Band swing king. Result: heavy, private jam blowout. The walls were hung with heavy rugs, the censer was filled to bursting, and the duo took off — Campbell on charged and elated guitar, Stacy handling commotion with whistle and clarinet. Their fried alien brew centers around a cloud of electronic rust that prevents nervous collapse and steals you away. Edition of 50.
Orange Emulsion Gush
(Chocolate Monk - choc.529) CDR $8.00
These two old heads were recently reunited when El Stickoid was granted a short break back to the Brexit Isles by his handlers after successfully sewing confusion in Tunisia. With his never-waning Protestant work ethic Campbell dragged our bedraggled Agent to Huddersfield’s Dai Hall on a Saturday afternoon in August for a short but savory jammer of sonic sourdough positivity. Praise the raise! “From a fine Calder nosebag we headed to the sandstone tones o’Hudd, Neil effusively introducing the jewelcase misery geyser, whose wares we browsed before hirsute sarnies and mauve sambuca coffee,” reports Foster, if the above seems to good to be true. “Vacated shop had space, signs of good goings on, hot beverage access. Deep, dark broom cupboard of bags of janglers, cables ’n’ footstomp extracted, and Neil applying suitable pluggings. Ebb ’n’ flow of harmonium lungs overstretched the retied strap and foot pedal duo down to one. Painted pedestals for swapping toys, alpini and no-lamb chanters, things fumbled out of parps to a scratchy throb, between mugs of tea. So long since I’d had a tinkle with anyone, but felt so good! I didn’t see it coming, but a gush of white emulsion appeared down my thighs as we deposited the clangers back in the broom cupboard. Glee turned to distress as we realized we’d tipped it into one of the few items not purchased in a Bradford poundshop, but teetering bows and floor rolls had a wind-down follow-up as we rubbed back the Superstition’s orange panels. ’Twas a guilty tale to confess at the well ventilated head of steam.” Edition of 50
Sol Powr
(Music Mundane) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
A logical precursor to Astral Social Club, with its heavy focus on keyboard-driven electronic pulse flotation, originally released on LP (Lal Lal Lal 2002). This 2007 reissues also includes previously released, impossible-to-find bonus tracks “Rolling Exploding” and “Sky Full Of Love” from a lathe-cut seven-inch (Gold Soundz 2003) and “Fuzzjam / Dub,” which was available for download from TechNOH.
String Quartets, Loops, Garden Talk
([ no label ]) Used CDR $6.00
“Thirteen haunting episodes you’re not likely to forget in a hurry,” says Sound Projector. “The program alternates two strands of musical activity. There are brief, faintly hilarious pieces of speeded-up records sabotaged by Campbell’s intermittent electronic belches…, followed immediately by deeply resonant, scorching drone-fests … effected using violins, guitars and scraped percussion, all recorded in such ways as to massively distort the natural sounds and generate far too many conflicting frequencies.”
NEIL CAMPBELL / HOWARD STELZER
Their Crowning Achievement
(Chocolate Monk - choc.480) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Stelzer got the ball rolling on this old-school transatlantic collab with the sounds of kids playing, bass guitar, and dozens upon dozens of layered cassette tapes played outdoors and in hallways — a pile of stuff from unrelated or subconsciously-related sources, basically, hung together by crossed fingers and willpower, to which Campbell, in the wilds of West Yorkshire, added electronics, guitar and percussion. The resulting near-hour-long piece is a Rorschach rumble that keeps your gravy wet for the forseeable. Edition of 60
NEIL CAMPBELL / LATE / IAN MIDDLETON
Vatic Lamps
([ no label ]) Used CDR $14.00
Exquisite layered drone from three underground legends.