Taking a side step from his series of numbered Astral Social Club volumes, Neil Campbell drops a quick two track smack round the head. Recorded live in April 2006, this may be titled after a bolt from the heavens but it’s much less rapturous than his usual material. This is a simpler, sweatier, and less delicately formed ASC release that shows him in a heads down noisier drive.
While the guitar is the central component of both tracks here, it’s used in very different ways. Quickly switching from punchy work which spreads out to an extended guitar squall, the sounds on "Passing Star" are the more frantic of the two. Even so, the track fails to really catch fire in comparison to "Solar Filament" or the Astral Social Club’s previous incredible output.
The stomp of "Solar Filament" has a hell of a lot less high end than its predecessor, taking a thicker thrashier route. Rhythmically stapled through the chest with a cheap wine Mo Tucker bash, this track doesn’t need to sink into really heavy or dubby depths. Instead it remains a fairly steadily splurging digital merge of elements. Like some gut punched and winded organism the stratums breathily heaves under the riffage. The layering of sounds here fails to shimmer like Campbell’s official Astral Social Club volumes, but this punked out path is equally as engrossing. At around the nine-minute mark the main thread is derailed through a burst of FX, a semtex strapped fuzz pedal takes its cue to spill the guitar one louder across the track. At its core lies what is either middle eastern music layered at three times the speed or metal girders attacked by bees; either way it’s a furious melee of notes. Just as the swarming stomp finally threatens to spill over into firework melodies the whole thing zips off into the distance like a tape reel running out.
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