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Dirk "Mont" Campbell: Music from a Walled Garden
ByMusic from a Walled GardenCampbell's long overdue follow-up to Round Toweris a logical successor, demonstrating not just growth, but clear assurance that Campbell's voice, which helped shape the Canterbury sound of Hatfield and the North and National Health, remains intact and unmistakable.
That's not to say the references are direct. Walled Garden's largely acoustic landscape is distanced from Egg's higher volume, electrified music, despite its similar penchant for irregular meters and episodic composition. Campbell does expand sonically on Round Tower, however, playing more than 50 instruments from around the world and including, this time, a broader array of percussion instruments. Still ethnic in nature, Walled Garden remains a far more ambitious effort; redolent, perhaps, of Campbell's inherent classicism, albeit more deeply subsumed.
Walled Tower is also a sonically denser project that, in contrast to Round Tower's miniaturesonly four of its predecessor's twenty tracks exceeded three minutesis composed of fewer, mostly longer compositions. Like Round Tower, Walled Garden's twelve primary tracks hang together like the 55-minute suite it is, and in contrast to Micus' lighter spirituality, Campbell darker proclivities are asserted from the get-go on the opening, episodic "Afraslab," ranging from drone-driven duduks to dense, dissonant voicings and softer flutes.
It may have only taken Campbell four months to record Walled Garden, as opposed to Round Tower's three years, but it's a far more complex work that, harmonically and structurally, relates more closely to the Campbell of Egg, despite its more inherently organic context. Even the shorter tracks reference greater classicism, with "The Almanac of Azarquiel" a mixture of meters, dynamics, and textures, as Campbell blends flutes, whistles, percussion, clarinet, violin samples, bass duduk, ukulele, kora, zurna, and nyatiti to traverse a broad landscape recalling, on a deeper level, earlier work like the wind quartets on Egg's The Civil Surface (Esoteric, 1974).
While his voice was, perhaps, a little harder to detect on Round Tower, Music from a Walled Garden clearly reflects Campbell's unmistakable vernacular, making it a far more compelling listen. Here's hoping Campbell won't make his fans wait another 12 years for the next installment.
Track Listing
Afraslab; Armadillo Mythology; Glass Butterflies; The Edge of Sleep; Zeno's Phantom Island; The Salmon of Wisdom; Provlepsi; The Almanac of Azarquiel; Calakmul; Oecinial Reckoning; Pibroch for the Midwinter Sun; Sunrise over Firle Beacon; The Star Trek Theme (bonus track).
Personnel
Dirk "Mont" Campbell
guitarDirk Campbell: fujara, filimbi, bansuri, duduk, bass duduk, Irish whistles, Irish flute, Greek floyera, clarinet, cello, ukulele, percussion, kora, nyatiti, uillean pipes C chanter, kaval, assorted kitchen percussion, string effects, gaida effects, cello harmonics, tongue drum, large bamboo chimes, percussion effects, zampogna, treble recorder, violin, launeddas, dudy, oud, laouto, viola, Bb kaval, Iranian ney, memesht, shenai, rabab, mezouerd, Highland pipe chanter, sorna, zurna, violin samples, Chau gong, Caral flute, singing bowl, suling, bugle, kudu horn, cow horns, coach horns, dungchens, zither, low whistle, gaida, fujara; Blackadder Brass: cornu samples (1, 8, 10-12); Julia Bishop: violin (6); Barbara Gaskin: voices (7); Jonathan Chappell: orchestra samples (8); Gill Emerson: cello samples (8, 10, 11); Origins: ambient metal hits (9).
Album information
Title: Music from a Walled Garden | Year Released: 2010 | Record Label: Self Produced
Comments
About Dirk "Mont" Campbell
Instrument: Guitar
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