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.”
• Latest from Vibracathedral Orchestra’s Neil Campbell’s alter-ego
• A head-on collision of classic UK electronic styles and electric grit
• “Three-sided” album has one foot in the analog realm and one foot in the digital world