Neil Campbell (musician)

Neil Campbell (born 19 May 1966) is a British musician, notable for his vast catalogue and his many collaborations. In 2005, The Wire declared that he, Richard Youngs and Matthew Bower had "provided the map co-ordinates for much of what passed for a post-punk UK underground during most of the 80s and 90s".

Campbell was born in Scotland. He began making music in 1979 using whatever came to hand, having already developed a firm belief in improvisation, and that virtuosity would negatively impact upon the results.

In 1984, he first made contact with Richard Youngs when his Kettering based group ESP Kinetic applied to appear on a cassette compilation on Youngs' Jabberwok label. Although unsuccessful, he persevered for a while with ESP Kinetic and its successor, Redemption Inc, before extending his range outside the rock band format. Initially and indeed, typically for the period, much of Campbell's work was released on small tape labels or by Campbell himself and it is nigh-on impossible to document all of his releases.

However, it was as a constant member of Nottingham's A Band that he met several future collaborators and first came to the attention of the international underground with an album "Artex/A Lot" being issued on Siltbreeze in the US. One reason for the A Band's growth in numbers is that, for each of their performances, he refused to appear onstage unless there was a new member. In 2007 Campbell was again involved in the revived A Band's recording and live activities.

As well as this, he often collaborated with UK noise music/art unit Smell and Quim under the alias D. Foist whilst also recording with Scottish DIY punk-improv duo Prick Decay on several occasions.

Towards the end of the 1990s Campbell hooked up with Julian Bradley to record 5 cassettes and an LP before they asked Michael Flower to join them, adding Bridget Hayden and Adam Davenport to form Vibracathedral Orchestra, who recorded and released prolifically, with many self-released items joining their US CD releases on VHF and Giardia. Campbell, of course, still found time to guest with Matthew Bower's groups Total and Sunroof!, work with people like Stewart Walden (especially as SWANC - the name taken from their initials), Rob Hayler, Phil Todd (of Ashtray Navigations), Universal Indians and (perhaps inevitably) Campbell Kneale and to record solo albums such as These Premises Are No Longer Bugged and Sol Powr. He also finally made a duo album with Richard Youngs called How The Garden Is. He took to the CD-R medium as enthusiastically as he did the cassette and many limited releases appeared on labels in the UK, U.S., New Zealand and Australia.

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