Hinterland CD
Released on Warp in 2015. **can be signed and a personalised message added on request
Tracklisting:
Side A:
Into The Cave
Bunkerpop
Hinterland
Groove It Out
Side B:
(I Can See) Landscapes
Silvering
Flee!
Red Scrap
Mortar Remembers you
Credits:
All songs written, recorded, arranged and performed by Julie Campbell.
All instruments played by Julie Campbell except drums played by Andrew Cheetham.
Additional recording by Bill Skibbe.
Pre-mixed by Julie Campbell.
Mixed by Bill Skibbe.
Produced by Julie Campbell and Bill Skibbe.
Hinterland. I kept coming here. I walked through unassuming districts, forming my own occult: the East Manc Territories, their leylines extending to Droylsden, Audenshaw, and Ashton, sites of my childhood and birth. Miles Platting: place of humble treasure and gleaming ruincolours, porous with industrial remnants and revenants; their transmissions still perceivable.
A system magic >> From the joyful, sprawling funkout of title track Hinterland, to the Voodo Ray-esque dancefloor bright colours of Groove It Out, to the cabbalistic shadowlands of IntoThe Cave and the bleak Marble Index-inspired Flee! From the motorik, twilight Silvering to the abrupt slash'n'burn urgency of (I Can See) Landscapes. From the feral and peppy Red Scrap to the valedictory salute of Mortar Remembers You >> this is H I N T E R L A N D
Some Praise:
‘Hinterland is a vibrant and urgent combination of genealogy and vision; it is truly a masterpiece. Not only does Campbell have the creative chops to create such richly evocative music, she hastransformed a nostalgic archive into tightly executed, profoundly new, dance music.’ (9.5/10 The Quietus 2015)
'Transforms stark sonic landscapes into brilliant danceable creations - one of our albums of 2015' (4/5 - Guardian)
'Utterly captivating...not just crafted one of the best albums of the year so far, but created one of the most powerful artistic statements of 2015.' (4.5/5 God Is In The TV)
Hinterland is pretty much one of the most wonderful records that I’ve had the privilege to hear in a long time. A rich, joyous album that truly rewards total immersion and repeated plays. It reflects the way that the forgotten edgelands are neither necessarily totally urban nor rural but often somewhere in-between. Hinterland is no rally against a decaying country or a simple celebration of the pastoral but something more complex. It is an incisive, inventive and utterly compelling celebration of a part of the fabric of the land we rarely see or contemplate, of walking and thinking and ultimately dreaming' (Manic Pop Thrills).
MORE ON HINTERLAND:
A palette of scratchy atmospherics, bright pop traces and 70s funk economy refracted through a cement-coloured North of England lens. Colourful passages over deep grooves, exploratory 6-minute workouts that recall the 12'' era, cassette magic, and love of the post-industrial ruinscape.
I recorded the songs of Hinterland in my bedroom 'studio' (such as it was) on a Tascam 8-track cassette recorder and Garageband.
Landscapes are the big theme of Hinterland - the word itself translates in German as ''the land behind'' . It might mean the land of your childhood, the landscape of the mind, the territories imagined and projected on a blank wall..Impressions of Audenshaw, Manchester outskirts, and psyche interiors are conjured again and again throughout the record.
The songs were very much realised but needed a final process of mixing to add depth and power and polish (but not too much polish). This was found at Keyclub Recording Co, Michigan.
Badlands, wheat fields, vapours belching from industrial monoliths, silos and steel mills , straight empty roads unspooling across Michigan, Illinois, Minneapolis, Idaho, Dakota…where Manchester meets Michigan; a place of free wild optimism, cross fertilisation, a mirror-land.
An analogue recording studio, helmed by Bill Skibbe, an ex-motorcycle mechanic from Detroit, co-founder of Chicago's Electrical Audio with Steve Albini. A studio sympathetic to the scrappy magic of cassette, the distortions and traces that add to the songs' DNA. I got to play with Linn drums, vintage synths, and send Hinterland through a 70's Flickinger mixing console that belonged - to Sly Stone.
Hinterland: I come here time and again, magnetised to these sites of abandonment., semi-vagrant. Stalking under trembling afternoon darkness to hear the possessed songs in the heart of the cement, the veins of bricks, the hidden thoughts of mesh fences, in a superstitious return. Feeling hot-eyed at the outpost, roaming for transformations, burning to make rituals, uncertain. Where might I 'belong'?
The imprint of environment; of towerblock and motorway. Nerves overlap with seance sightings, excitements, memory. The real other stories of Manchester glimmer in the rubble. Here I can make music for dancing and ruminating, in the shadows and sudden sun-bursts of a post-industrial ruinscape, current and fleeting.