An acclaimed Liverpool musician has launched a new album inspired by an Edwardian era fantasy novel.
Neil Campbell‘s new album, ‘The Smoky God‘, was released on the 8th of March and is based on Willis George Emerson’s 1908 book of the same name.
Emerson’s ‘The Smoky God, or a Voyage Journey to the Inner Earth’, is a story presented as a true account describing the adventures of Olaf Jansen, a Norwegian sailor, who sailed with his father through an entrance to the Earth’s interior at the North Pole.
Their journey spans across their lifetime and for two years the sailor and his father lived with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies; described by Emerson as ’12 feet tall and whose world was lit by a “smoky” central sun – the ‘Smoky God’.
At the end of the story our protagonist Olaf Jansen returns, via a South Pole passage, to the surface world but nobody believes his fanciful tale and he is institutionalised for many years in an asylum. Only on his deathbed is his personal testimony transcribed by Emerson in the book.
Most of the music for ‘The Smoky God’ was recorded at the end of Campbell’s work with Joey Zeb, Andy Maslivec and Marty Snape in the band Bulbs around 2013.
Campbell recommenced pre-production of this recording in 2016 with Marty Snape in order to perfect the electronics. After moving the project across to Liverpool’s Crosstown Studios with Roger Gardiner on bass and Viktor Nordberg on drums Campbell pulled together all the additional tracking, which involved a great deal of overdubbing.
A continuation of this work with engineer/co-producer Jon Lawton, they have brought to this album many production and arrangement techniques developed across recordings made together over the last five years, culminating in an album that melds progressive rock with systems (minimalist) music in equal measure.
The Smoky God can be ordered as a CD or in digital format now via https://neilcampbell.