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neil campbell
I was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1966, sharing a birthday with Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Pete Townsend and Joey Ramone.
Formative exposure to music included bagpipes, The Walker Brothers and "Mr Tambourine Man" by the Byrds during the early 1970s, then PIL's "Metal box" and Throbbing Gristle during the late 70s. I heard the Velvet Underground in about 1981 and never looked back - all that bagpipe music suddenly made perfect sense. Other musical epiphanies since include early Half Japanese, Omming for Woks, "Metal machine music", Neu!, Skullflower's "Obsidian shaking codex", Japanese noise, Thomas Tallis's "Spem in alium", Albert Ayler, John Cage, the "Gaelic Psalms from Lewis" LP and Wolfgang Voigt.
I've been recording primitive "experimental" music since 1979, with whatever tools come to hand - firstly tape recorders and household objects, followed by synthesizers and guitars when finances permitted. I never felt much need to develop virtuosity - gut feeling and raw excitement are much more important, so I started "improvising" instinctively when I was 13, because that's how I believed all music was created. In a way, I'm still stuck in that primordial swamp - music as magical life-force, non-intellectual, sensual, intoxicating; all the romantic crap people are afraid to stand up for these days. I'm still "A Believer".
After playing solo and in a wild variety of stable and not-so-stable bands over the past 25 years, I am currently part of the Vibracathedral Orchestra, a quintet that takes that musical swamp as a starting place and sets sail for the sun at every available opportunity. See www.vibracathedral.co.uk for more info.
Artex/A Lot LP (Siltbreeze 1991)
Neil/Richard/Stewart/Simon "Durian Durian" LP (Forced Exposure 1992)
"These premises are no longer bugged" solo LP (Giardia 1997)
Julian Bradley/Neil Campbell LP (american tapes 1998)
Sunroof! "Delicate autobahn under construction" double-CD (VHF 1999)
Vibracathedral Orchestra "dabbling with gravity and who you are" CD (VHF 2002)
"SOL POWR" solo LP (lal lal lal 2002)
Vibracathedral Orchestra "the queen of guess" CD (VHF 2003) |
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