A boggling and super-fun 100+ minutes from Neil Campbell’s Astral Social Club, Fountain Transmitter Medications delivers the head-on collision of classic UK electronic styles, electric grit and the future. The LP starts with a set of tight chuggers, the high-end racket of “Infinity Thug” ripping through the speakers before closing the side with the loping “Grisly Terroir.” Side two is comprised of the 20-minute epic “Diamonds in the Dreich,” a mid-tempo journey of Throbbing Gristle-ish lurch-pulse and disembodied voices, giving way after ten minutes to an organ-interlude which accelerates into a full-on rock jam loaded with scathing guitar slashing. It’s unlike anything else in the Astral Social Club catalog. The CD (“side three”) offers three lengthy explorations of key facets of the overall Astral Social concept, where Campbell really stretches out and lets the tape run—the rushing sound effects and buried rock of “Sun Still God,” the bristling electric juddering of “Erotic Meditation,” and the blown-out space-rock (!) of “Squeegee Anthem #3.”
LP+CD $16.00
10/14/2014
MP3 $9.90
10/14/2014
FLAC $11.99
10/14/2014
After a couple years in the underground wilderness, Neil Campbell's unique Astral Social Club returns to VHF with the squelching, restless ambience of Octuplex. The CD is split roughly in half between Harmonia / Voigt-style chuggers and sweeping swirls of instantly recognizable dronage, familiar to fans of Campbell's extensive contributions to Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof! and others. His interest in techno comes out on "Caustic Roe" and "Muscle Adductor," which neatly compile the influence of recent minimal jam innovations with piles of synth and effects noise, lending the beat-driven tracks a rough, unfussy style. Other cuts like "Muegik Churn" and "Pilgrim Sunburst" swell with twittering electric birdsong and synthetic rain, the trademark sound of many Astral titles. Octuplex is full up with collaborator cameos, including the familiar (Richard Youngs, John Clyde-Evans), and the novel (Spider Stacy from The Pogues!).
CD $12.00
02/03/2009
MP3 $7.92
02/03/2009
With this release the VHF catalog moves into triple digit territory and the label is celebrating with the first official album by Neil Campbell's (Vibracathedral Orchestra) genre-destroying Astral Social Club unit. Following a series of instantly sold-out limited edition CDRs, Campbell agreed to select, edit and remix a collection of tracks for wider release from the group's rather exclusive catalog. VHF100 is a dense mega-mix of continually peaking sound-flow. Working a tricky hybrid ground between contemporary UK teams like Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra, and the influence of Kompakt-style pulsating electronic "techno," Astral Social Club's music shimmers and throbs in a truly psychedelic manner. Campbell and Tirath Singh Nirmala have radically re-worked these tracks to be unrecognizable from their original CDR issues, but they are instantly recognizable as part of the unrelenting Astral Social Club rainbow stream.
CD $12.00
10/31/2006
MP3 $9.90
10/31/2006