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Astral Social Club, "Super Grease"
This vinyl-only companion to Astral Social Club's Neon Pibroch album, also on Important, is the equal to its more readily available CD counterpart. Balancing organic techniques with digital tools like he just originated the perfect formula, Neil Campbell has truly found his calling with his ASC project.
Melodic loops buckle under the gentle pressure, wah wah drones blend in with bird call electronics and pattering beats. As the title track opener progresses the sounds slurry into even madder digital sounds, fading into and out of harshness. Campbell's mixing of elements gives the impression that a Neil Campbell DJ session would never reach the expected peaks and troughs of a four-to-the-floor. Instead the music sits high in the breezy atmosphere, wobbling between linear tracks.
The brief "Manifold flange" is too brief to get a real road trip out of its sounds. The trapped and degraded/degrading droplets swirl around while a skinny beat pounds time. The chunks of repetition that make up "Nitrous Foment" build in single notes and batches of barks. Rising in summer wave lifts they engulf the song's core, leaving the songs bones as dust and swept away with the wind. A bit of noisy muscle is squeezed in at the end. It's typical Campbell.
