Liverpool guitar virtuoso and composer, Neil Campbell, has released an emphatic prog rock album that’s receiving rave reviews! The talented and versatile musician, who dips in and out of genres effortlessly, has this time produced a driving, dramatic progressive rock album on the dawn of his 50th birthday.
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A favourite of BBC Radio 6 Music and widely regarded as one of the most talented guitarists to come out of Liverpool, Neil Campbell is a master of many genres — whether it’s working wonders with loops or adding complex layers to compositions. Contrary to his last album, Faldum, a stunning and poignant orchestral masterpiece, The Smoky God is a dynamic prog rock heavy hitter!
A mini-album based on Willis George Emerson’s ‘The Smoky God’, it takes you on a swirling, awe-inspiring journey — with so much going on and so many layers. The album has been a long time in coming, certainly a labour of love, and it’s no surprise given the complexity of its layers and structures. It’s one for the music connoisseurs for sure.
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Most of the music of ‘The Smoky God’ originated at the end of Neil’s work with Joey Zeb, Andy Maslivec and Marty Snape in the band Bulbs around 2013. Pre-production of this recording recommenced in around 2016 in collaboration with Marty Snape, who contributed electronics and assisted with the album’s pre-production.
After moving the project across to Liverpool’s Crosstown Studios, Roger Gardiner (bass) and Viktor Nordberg (drums) and Campbell pulled together all the additional tracking, with a great deal of overdubbing. Working with engineer/co-producer Jon Lawton, they’ve brought many production and arrangement techniques developed across recordings made together over the last five years.
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Well, what can we say? It’s been a long time coming but so worth the wait! The album has a sense of adventure about it, captured by track titles Setting Sail, Anthem Of The Giants and Returning. With so many guitar riffs, synths, keyboards, drums and more, there’s so much going on and it certainly takes you on a journey that takes your imagination into overdrive.
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It’s a very difficult task to create music that represents a story and matches it perfectly, but Neil Campbell does this with such skill and genius. The Smoky God, or a Voyage Journey to the Inner Earth, was written by Willis George Emerson and published in 1908 — a story presented as a true account describing the adventures of Norwegian sailor Olaf Jansen.
Sailing through an entrance to the Earth’s interior at the North Pole, for two years Jansen and his father lived with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies who, Emerson writes, were 12 feet tall and whose world was lit by a “smoky” central sun – the Smoky God. An epic tale, it is captured thunderously in this forward thinking and experimental creation of Neil and his team of maetros.
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You never quite know what you’re going to get from Neil Campbell, a delicate and poignant collection of compositions, a guitar masterclass or even an epic prog rock journey, but you can expect pure quality that’s for sure. Happy 50th, Neil, and please do keep the music coming!
For more on Neil Campbell and to keep up to date with gigs check him out on FACEBOOK
CHECK OUT THE ALBUM ON BANDCAMP
