In the late seventies, punk was a reaction to the perceived self-indulgence of progressive rock. As the years went by, punk slowly became complacent, and even worse, politically what it set out to fight in the first place. With Glenn Danzig selling merch with Nazi symbols and John Lydon praising the likes of Donald Trump, we know that it is now time to look back at the time before punk.

Which brings us to Dirk Mont Campbell, a musician mostly known by some as the leader of Egg, who were one of the most original bands from the Canterbury scene but still broke up after only three albums due to a lack of success. He went on to play with National Health, but once again became disillusioned and eventually left the Western music scene.

He started collecting instruments from all corners of the world, learned to play them, and has since then worked in non-Western folk bands and also occasionally released solo albums. His first one was Music From A Round Tower in 1996, followed by Music From A Walled Garden thirteen years later in 2009. It took another sixteen years for his third and probably last solo album Long Time Gone.

Dirk Mont Campbell plays nearly thirty different instruments on the album, with occasional contributions on piano from his son Adam. A couple of songs also have guest vocalists, and that’s about it. I was at first reluctant to even listen to the album, because I was expecting no-nonsense ethnic music. But Campbell knows how to combine his non-Western musical education with modern classical music, and sometimes even adds a hint of pop appeal.

As there are sometimes up to ten instruments played in one song, the multitracking must have been an incredible amount of work, and it speaks for the artist that the end result sounds like a piece performed by an entire ensemble. Listening to the entire album from beginning to end feels like a musical journey all over the planet. While it all sound surprisingly homogeneous, there are some highlights that need to be mentioned. Gallows Bank combines a whimsy flute melody with modern classical ambitions that sound like Henry Cow with a sense of humour playing Ligetti. Let’s All Go To The Game is an acoustic guitar ballad with vocalist Meadow Veasey (aka Spider) lamenting that for many—mostly men—football is more important than the world’s real concerns. Na Shan Eshash Psilarasha, despite its Indian vibe, is actually a Greek piece of music with sublime vocals by Ella Russell. Three New Psalms is an a cappella piece sung by a quartet that sounds quite churchy, but the lyrics are miscellaneous news reports. A special surprise for Egg fans comes in the form of an unreleased demo, title La Livinière, that Dirk Mont Campbell recorded for a possible Egg reunion that unfortunately never came to happen. The song is about his last meeting in the south of France with original Soft Machine member Kevin Ayers who passed away one year later. This nearly seven-minute-long track may only be a demo with programmed instruments, but the music and the lyrics allow us to relive a nice moment of nostalgia.

As you can gather, Dirk Mont Campbell is not only a very educated musician, but also an activist, which brings us back to the first paragraph. Dirk Mont Campbell is a fervent environmentalist and anti-fascist, who even gate-crashed a National Conservatism conference in 2023, where he managed to say a few antifascist statements before security dragged him from the stage. And that is a more punk attitude than kids today copying three chord riffs from nearly fifty years ago. Dirk Mont Campbell is now in his seventy-fifth year, and reading about him on the Internet shows a man who really lived an accomplished life. Long Time Gone may be his final legacy, and it is well worth listening to.

13 songs

60:06 minutes

***** *****

Genre: non-western, progressive

Label: áMARXE

Released: 4^th April 2025

Artist pages:
Bandcamp