- If you'd told me before I heard Octuplex that what I'd love about Neil Campbell's latest release as Astral Social Club would be the same thing I love about the very different "Hyph Mngo" by Joy Orbison, I'd have looked at you a little weirdly. What makes me adore "Hyph Mngo" is that when it gets up to full speed the swirling hypnosis Orbison conjures up with vocal fragments, a woozy snyth and that great beat becomes subtly disorienting. Unless I'm staring at the track index I'm never sure when it's going to end, because the song seems to almost strip out some higher brain functions as it goes along, leaving me pleasantly dazed.
But if Orbison achieves this effect with a certain amount of velvet to his touch, Campbell goes about unmooring you in a more direct fashion—one akin to smacking you round the head with a 2x4. Not that Octuplex is particularly loud, but from the first hit of "Caustic Roe"'s mutant schaffel stomp, Campbell comes at you with everything he's got. It's disorientation by overload rather than seduction.
The first three tracks are the closest thing to straightforward electronic compositions to be found, but they're still odd, squelching beasts. "Mügik Churn" with its dense flurry of spiraling beats sums up this side of Octuplex best—it's somewhere between the brain-numbing joys of New York's Excepter and the more whimsical side of Aphex Twin. But once "Pilgrim Sunburst" (introduced and ended with songs sung by Campbell's young son Magnus) begins, the album goes somewhere else entirely.
For 13 minutes, "Pilgrim Sunburst" and "Sweet Spraint" ought to make everyone forget that Fuck Buttons put out a record this year. While I do enjoy Tarot Sport there is a sense in which it feels too easy, like the duo have found a button marked "EPIC" and just spent an hour holding it down. Campbell, meanwhile, traffics in chaos and destruction as much as he does uplift. "Sweet Spraint," the briefer of the two, is equally interested in tearing itself to shreds as it is in hitting some sort of crescendo.
By the time the album lurches to a halt with the distorted machine pounding of "Hot Toxer," Octuplex's most immediately ingratiating song, it's hard not to appreciate Campbell's skill. Unlike most noise-damaged, unashamedly abstract albums, it's bouncy and beat-driven enough you could probably dance to some of it, and it's irrepressible enough you kind of want to try.
Tracklist 01. Caustic Roe
02. Mügik Churn
03. Aggro Vault
04. Pilgrim Sunburst
05. Sweet Spraint
06. Radial Hermaphrodite
07. Muscle Adductor
08. Hot Toxer