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Astral Social Club
Beaming in from the limited edition cold, this tweaked-out compilation of Astral Social Club's early volumes is both an excellent introduction and a fresh perspective on the project. These eleven tracks, pulled from the first seven self-released CD-Rs releases by the head of the VHF label, weave in and out of conventional consciousness, worked into each other by the Club's sole member, Neil Campbell (now ex-Vibracathedral Orchestra).
Everything's untitled here, so it's a little difficult for anal retentives to source tracks back to the original volume tracks. It gets even harder when Campbell starts flaying tracks together as on the opening piece here, making the pair seem like they were always meant to be together, the colliding and then syncing bleeps spinning like cross section peeks at planetary rings. What Astral Social Club's music excels at where others fail is the creation of a kind of musical electric ooze, collected sounds being propelled as one mass on breathless electronic steam huffing bursts. This squelch and squeeze effect of digital and analogue has an almost physical presence, Campbell's blessed mind/body drifting through various worlds carrying particles back home with him.
This mix is probably best expressed through the fuzzy smothered bagpipe of "Four" and its shifting sleepy gaze that seems caught up in the digital eddies. It’s either great fortune or great acuity, but all of the songs here contain chimerical unintentional melodies, the matching of these two tissue types sounding distinctly hands on. Despite the inner thread of beauty right the way through, this music never settles into mere ambience or any form of mild listening, the sinister churns of Campbell's flickering panicked vocals keep slipping through. He's no stranger to beats either with analogue and digital percussion clicking, cutting and stomping throughout, sometimes lifting off like Can’s rhythm section gone off-the-rails. The percussive buckle of Tirath Nirmala Singh's reworking of "Three" proves the most if-focus beat, setting off firecrackers in an exploding never-ending loop. Sounding like a bootleg of LX Paterson finally losing his mind during his most wrecked collage session, bursts of bass drained dub melody percolate through.
Regardless of a few missed classics from the early runs of the volumes, this is still an tremendous round-up of the early material. It's like being reintroduced to the first seven releases in one full-size rush, leaving me thirsty for the next dose.
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