Description
Neil Campbell’s Astral Social Club return to VHF with a list of collaborators in tow, including Richard Youngs, John Clyde-Evans, and oddly, Spider Stacy from The Pogues. Although it’s difficult to determine quite who did what on this noisy debacle, the results present a highlight in ASC’s recent output, establishing a sound that’s both tumultuous yet also quite crisply delivered, particularly on the more rhythmically-oriented tracks like ‘Caustic Roe’ or ‘Aggro Vault’, which mimic the surreal anti- beat creations of Black Dice. Elsewhere, ‘Pilgrim Sunburst’ and ‘Radial Hermaphropite’ present tripped-out, searing illbience with flecks of jazz and free-improv clashing with programmed electronics, while closing piece ‘Hot Toxer’ is pretty audacious, sounding like a Kompakt schaffel 12″ being played-back on the surface of the sun – melting those beats into a squidgy mess of effects and excessive saturation.
