Alog / Astral Social Club

Split #20

Another high quality, album-length release, the twentieth 12” in our acclaimed Split Series features two artists who’ve carved out very singular, purposeful paths for themselves. Here, both roll out their markedly different, yet somehow complimentary material, the unifying element being a heavily skewed outsider take on dancefloor electronica / techno.

Active since 1997 and one of Norway´s leading exponents of experimental electronic music, Alog is the duo of Espen Sommer Eide and Dag-Are Haugan. Mainstays at the Rune Grammofon label since their debut ‘Red Shift Swing’ (1999), their unique, hybrid sound has since developed through four further albums that have unfurled a series of abstract yet accessible, self-contained sound-worlds, each animated with their own internal logic, mixing a wide variety of both electronic and acoustic sources into something warm, intricate and organic. Quirky and unpredictable, they have refused any fixed position, instead embracing the freedom to flit and root in the cracks between strands of minimalism, electronica, post-rock, improv and vernacular musics - merging woozy, stuttering electronica (a la Oval / Nobukazu Takemura / etc.), with rich, shoegazey guitars, freeform improvisation, Scandinavian folk, field recording and the masterful editing and soundscaping of electroacoustic composition. Their most recent album ‘Amateur’ (2007), marked a clear advance in the group's sound. Previously largely informed by applying radical laptop treatments to live, acoustic instrumentation, they have increasingly working with a variety of acoustic (and self-built) instruments as well as collaborating with other musicians for long recording sessions in special locations.

A stirring, 13-minute long track created expressly for the 12” format (one they’ve rarely used), that sounds like nothing they’ve previously released, ‘Every Word…’ was made during Alog’s Autumn 2008 tour of Japan. Very much a ‘live’ improvisation-based track, the ‘shouting choir’ was recorded in the woodshed of a primary school in Bergen together with regular Alog collaborator Nicholas H. Møllerhaug. Made into a 3-part ‘epic’ narrative using mainly synthesizer, guitar and vocals, it’s a stunning, rapidly-expanding / developing piece that increasingly ramps up the tension, accelerating its energy levels, seemingly buckling and collapsing under its own weight / energy, before finding its feet again.

Named after a derelict social club in his hometown of Mirfield, W. Yorkshire, Astral Social Club is the project of prolific Scottish-born Neil Campbell. A pivotal figure on the UK post-punk underground, with a vast catalogue and numerous collaborations (with UK noise/art unit Smell and Quim; Swiss aktionists Runzelstirn x%x% Gurgelstøck / Schimpfluch-Gruppe; Scottish DIY punk-improv duo Prick Decay / Blood Stereo; and individuals like Campbell Kneale, Phil Todd and long-term ally Richard Youngs), Campbell first came to prominence in the early ‘90s as a member of the influential Nottingham-based amorphous free rock collective, A Band. A member of both Matthew Bower’s Total and Sunroof! projects, he appeared on three of the latter’s albums before helping to form the hugely influential and prolific (over 40 releases) Leeds-based drone/psych-rock outfit, Vibracathedral Orchestra in 1998. Campbell left VCO in 2006 to go solo as Astral Social Club, under which moniker he's released a number of albums (on labels like VHF, Important, Qbico, Textile) and an ever-increasing stream of self-released CDRs in a ltd. edition series of volumes (currently up to #19) that open an intriguing – often stylistically very varied – sketchbook-like view into his evolving creativity. Integrating psych-rock and exploratory fusion of the ’70s, early ’90s techno / electronica,’80s post-punk, krautrock, and the thriving home-brew of today’s psych / noise underground, ASC tracks form an unstable, exhilarating slew of densely stacked textural / tonal detail with seemingly no fixed centre, piling electronic and acoustic textures together – spluttering drum machines, gurgling electronics, mangled guitar lines, processed violin and all manner of other sonic detritus.

The three tracks here were recorded by Campbell, John Clyde-Evans, Paul Walsh and Spider Stacy. The 135bpm blood-pulse and super-abundant textural growth of ‘Clarion Super-Cortex’ is described by Campbell as a ”rolling-through-the-cracks techno format invented by Clyde-Evans, and put through the ASC brass mangler... an imaginary club hit for people who like to dance between the beats”. This mulches down into the beatless ‘Vurt Chorale #1’, weaving several different jams (including one with The Pogues’ Spider Stacey on electronics) together. Designed to simulate several different realities slipping in and out of focus, it was partly inspired by Neil’s reading Jeff Noon, “so the virtual chorale of my treated vocals became a ‘Vurt’ chorale, in reference to his classic novel.” A wake-up slap in the face after such shimmering drift, ‘Corby Kiss’ offers a tribute to the hard-living ex-steel men of the Northants town where Campbell grew up, and features Paul Walsh, original half of the notorious Smell x%x% Quim (with whom Campbell formed the band Early Hominids).