I remember hearing reports about the Neil Campbell's (who was also a member of trippy-free-music UK group Vibracathedral Orchestra) Astral Social Club CDRs by friends who were performing psychedelic noise-improv over in Britain in the mid-00's but didn't get my hands on any ASC stuff until a friend passed along a high-bitrate archive of ASC CDRs a few years back. If you remember the very crowded "psych/drone" field of play at the time, then you probably know that Campbell was doing some serious genre mashing. ASC tends to swing from Chain Reaction-style resonance-flared dub to Harmonia/Cluster territory to heavy guitar grunge-dirge in a single release. What really appeals to me though, is the mono-mania of how ASC tracks are structured on the Volume 1-7 (really) CDRs. Upon hitting "play", you're immediately thrown into an all-enveloping sound as maximum timbre cycles in and out, gradually, while always maintaining a pastural focus on the main "riff". If you could set-up some sick studio monitors in your car and hit the Autobahn (or maybe just 280-S from SF, CA or the 5 south of Salem, OR) this would be just about the best music ever.
Check out "Track 1" from the Volume 1 CDR for the more hypno-Italo edge of the ASC spectrum. For five picks from the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction-end of the ASC milieu, peep the download.
(P.S. Neil, if you're listening shoot us a link where folks can buy your music direct!)
