Mont Campbell

Last updated

Dirk Campbell
Birth nameHugo Martin Montgomery Campbell
Also known asMont Campbell
Born (1950-12-30) 30 December 1950 (age 73)
Ismaïlia, Egypt
OriginEngland
Genres
Occupation(s)Musician, composer, sustainable energy company executive
Instrument(s)various wind instruments (French horn, reeds, flutes, horns, whistles, bagpipes), harps, lutes, bass guitar, electric piano, guitar, sampler, vocals, programming
Years active1968–present
Labels Deram, Virgin Records, Voiceprint, East Side Digital, Hermes Records, Evolution
Website Dirk Campbell homepage

Dirk Campbell (born Hugo Martin Montgomery Campbell, 30 December 1950), previously known as Mont Campbell, is a British composer, multi-instrumentalist, and energy company executive. [1] [2] Campbell is best known for his work with progressive rock bands such as Egg and National Health, though he would later "forswear the genre of rock music altogether, and would begin to develop an interest in folk tradition and, increasingly, non-western music." [ citation needed ]

Contents

Cambell began a full-time career as composer in 1989 with film and commercials commissions from Redwing Films and now lectures on music in remote antiquity, and ways of incorporating non-western music into contemporary composition. [1] He is a director of Ovesco, a Sussex-based alternative energy company. [2]

Biography

Early years

Cambell was born in a British military hospital in Ismaïlia, Egypt to parents Mary Elizabeth "Jackie" Shaw and Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Archibald Leslie Montgomery "Archie" Campbell (1910-1974) of the Royal Tank Regiment. [1] [ citation needed ] Campbell was named after his grandfather, the composer Martin Shaw.[ citation needed ] The family moved to Kenya in 1951, where they lived until his mother and sister’s return to the UK in 1962, his father in 1963. [ citation needed ]

In 1966, Campbell attended the City of London Boys School. While there, he met aspiring keyboard player Dave Stewart and budding guitarist Steve Hillage. The pair recruited Campbell into their band, and Campbell switch his focus from guitar to bass guitar. [3]

Rock musician (1968–1976)

In early 1968, Campbell, Stewart and Hillage formed the short-lived psychedelic blues band Uriel with drummer Clive Brooks. Following Hillage's departure in mid-1968, the remaining trio took on a progressive rock direction and changed the band name to Egg. [4] They group would briefly reunite with Hillage to record an album under the project name of Arzachel; each member employed an arcane surname both for fun and to get around contractual problems.[ citation needed ]

Egg released its self-titled debut album in 1970, and The Polite Force the following year. Campbell played bass guitar in the group (as well as singing and adding French horn) and was also its main composer, citing Igor Stravinsky as his main influence.[ citation needed ] He has, however, expressed reservations about his later time with the band, saying of The Polite Force, "I didn't enjoy the sessions which seemed to me turgid and unsatisfying. I don't like the album." [5] All Egg members also played and composed for the Ottawa Music Co., a large ensemble co-led by Dave Stewart and Chris Cutler between 1971 and 1972, which brought together members of Egg, Henry Cow and Khan, along with other composers and instrumentalists. Cutler recalls the ensemble playing Campbell's "Study for Four Keyboards", "Enneagram", and "Three Pieces for Wind Quartet" (and also that Campbell, during the last OMC show, "(swung) across the stage on a rope shouting 'It's a mug's game'.") [6]

Persistently struggling to maintain their record deal with Deram, Egg amicably disbanded in 1972. By this time Campbell had become interested in mysticism and was involved in the international spiritual movement Subud. Having unsuccessfully pursued work as a plumber and as a graphic designer, he was invited to compose music for a film by director David Anderson: this in turn led to him attending the Royal College of Music, studying the French horn and composition and gaining his ARCM diploma in 1974. [5] With mixed feelings about his academic studies, he reunited with his former Egg bandmates for their final album The Civil Surface (also in 1974), which consisted of unreleased material written in 1971–72, including what many[ who? ] view as Campbell's masterpiece in the progressive rock canon, Enneagram.[ citation needed ] The album was bolstered by two Campbell-composed wind quartets (which featured neither Stewart nor Brooks). [3]

During this period, Campbell maintained a connection with the Canterbury scene movement of which Egg had been a part, playing and recording as a support musician for Henry Cow, Hatfield & The North, Slapp Happy and others. Following graduation (and after a very brief stint with Alan Gowen's jazz fusion band Gilgamesh [7] ), Campbell linked up with Stewart again in 1975, this time as part of the original line-up of National Health. Although Campbell initially enjoyed his work with the band (for which he composed several pieces including "Paracelsus", "Agrippa", "Zabaglione" and "Starlight on Seaweed"), within a year he became disheartened by its lack of success. [5] He left the band in June 1976 after a UK tour, a radio session for the BBC and a "disastrous" performance at a one-off French festival (the latter being his final appearance with the group). [3] Although National Health secured a recording contract following his departure, Campbell's compositions would be dropped from the set: recordings of them would not surface until twenty years later on the archive collection "Missing Pieces".

World musician (1977–present)

Campbell's final gig with National Health resulted in a total discouragement with rock music, and in subsequent years he would abandon the genre altogether, describing it as having "very limited powers of expression... a rather fixed, limited stratum of musical experience, and one that I no longer feel particularly drawn to." [3] In 1977, he dropped his old school nickname of "Mont" in favour of "Dirk" [3] and formed the two-guitar, flute and violin quartet Mozaic, which mostly played "pleasant, undemanding" Campbell pieces at weddings and social events. He also recorded an (ultimately unreleased) tape of other compositions, called Individual Extracts. [3]

In 1983, Campbell developed an overwhelming interest in world music [3] and spent most of the next decade-and-a-half mastering a wide variety of wind instruments, harps and lutes from diverse cultures around the world. This led to an ongoing career as a specialist session musician and composer for films, theatre and television, including work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and contributions to The Last King of Scotland , Long Walk to Freedom , Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , State of Play , the 2008 revival of Survivors and the 2017 film of The Mummy . He has enjoyed a run of cinema collaborations with his 1970s creative partner David Anderson, including Dreamland Express, In the Time of Angels and Deutsche Post. [8]

Campbell released his first solo album, Music from a Round Tower in 1996 (a mixture of authentic traditional instrumentation with MIDI, sampling and sequencing, plus contributions from Dave Stewart). Despite declaring in 2004 that he "personally (had) nothing to say in the western musical language" [3] Campbell followed it up in 2009 with Music from a Walled Garden. He has gone on to record as half of The World Wind Band (the other half being fellow multi-wind player Jan Hendrickse) and currently plays and composes as part of the "non-European folk" band Kalamus, which he has described as "mostly flute and bagpipe music with percussion" [5] and which released their first album Bronze in 2011.

In January 2009 Campbell appeared on British television in the BBC documentary Prog Rock Britannia: An Observation in Three Movements, reminiscing about Egg and the progressive rock movement in general.

Activist

Campbell is a member of Extinction Rebellion and protested against fascism at the National Conservatism Conference. [9] [10]

Multi-instrumental abilities

Campbell is a diverse multi-instrumentalist. During his time as a rock musician he predominantly played electric bass guitar, six-string electric guitar and electric piano, but has mostly abandoned these instruments since his retirement from rock music. He is an occasional singer and, on his solo albums, has worked with digital age music technology (sampling, programming and MIDI).

Since Campbells's reinvention as a world music and historical musical specialist, he has focused predominantly on acoustic instrumentation and plays around forty different instruments, including: [11]

Work in energy provision

Campbell also pursues parallel work as an environmentalist and alternative energy specialist. He is a founding director of the Ouse Valley Energy Services Company (Ovesco), which began its work by initiating a solar power station in Campbell's current hometown of Lewes and has since expanded to cover further sustainable energy projects in the Ouse Valley region. [5] [2]

Family life

His partner Adrienne died in 2012. [12] Campbell has one son and six daughters, one of whom, Anna Campbell, was killed in 2018 fighting for the Kurdish Women's Protection Units in Syria. [12]

Discography

Solo

With the World Wind Band (Dirk Campbell and Jan Hendrickse)

With Uriel/Arzachel

With Egg

With National Health

Appears on (partial list)

Filmography

Sources

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gong (band)</span> International progressive/psychedelic rock band

Gong are a psychedelic rock band that incorporates elements of jazz and space rock into their musical style. The group was formed in Paris in 1967 by Australian musician Daevid Allen and English vocalist Gilli Smyth. Band members have included Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Steve Hillage, Mike Howlett, Tim Blake, Pierre Moerlen, Bill Laswell and Theo Travis. Others who have played on stage with Gong include Don Cherry, Chris Cutler, Bill Bruford, Brian Davison, Dave Stewart and Tatsuya Yoshida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Hillage</span> British guitarist

Stephen Simpson Hillage is an English musician, best known as a guitarist. He is associated with the Canterbury scene and has worked in experimental domains since the late 1960s. Besides his solo recordings he has been a member of Khan, Gong and System 7.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Howlett</span> Musical artist

Michael John Gilmour Howlett is a bass guitar player, record producer and teacher based in the United Kingdom and Australia.

David Lloyd Stewart is an English keyboardist and composer known for his work with the progressive rock bands Uriel, Egg, Khan, Hatfield and the North, National Health, and Bruford. Stewart is the author of two books on music theory and wrote a music column for Keyboard magazine (USA) for thirteen years. He has also composed music for TV, film and radio, much of it for Victor Lewis-Smith's ARTV production company. He has worked with singer Barbara Gaskin since 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nik Turner</span> English musician (1940–2022)

Nicholas Robert Turner was an English musician, best known as a member of space rock pioneers Hawkwind. Turner played saxophone and flute, as well as being a vocalist and composer. While with Hawkwind, Turner was known for his experimental free jazz stylisations and outrageous stage presence, often donning full makeup and Ancient Egypt-inspired costumes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Gaskin</span> British singer

Barbara Gaskin is an English singer formerly associated with the UK Canterbury scene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Didier Malherbe</span> Musical artist

Didier Malherbe, is a French jazz, rock and world music musician, known as a member of the bands Gong and Hadouk, as well as a poet.

Egg were an English progressive rock band formed in July 1968. Remembered for their strange, experimental sound, the band produced three studio albums before disbanding in 1974.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lindsay Cooper</span> English musician (1951–2013)

Lindsay Cooper was an English bassoon and oboe player and composer. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags (1980), The Gold Diggers (1983), and Music For Other Occasions (1986).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Paperboys</span> Canadian folk music band

The Paperboys are a Canadian folk music band from Vancouver that formed in 1991. The Paperboys blend Celtic folk with bluegrass, Mexican, Eastern European, African, zydeco, soul and country influences. The band has had a variety of members and line-ups since its original formation, with Landa remaining as the sole founding member, although veteran banjoist/bassist Cam Salay often returns as a guest performer. Known for consistently creating pop songs with melodic hooks, their music has been called versatile, with a wide range of influences, melding diverse musical influences more successfully than some other Irish rock bands have previously.

<i>The Civil Surface</i> 1974 studio album by Egg

The Civil Surface is the third and final studio album by the English progressive rock band Egg, originally released in 1974 on Caroline Records. The band had broken up in 1972, leaving some of their favourite stage pieces unrecorded. At organist Dave Stewart's suggestion, the trio re-united solely to record these final numbers. Among the guest musicians on the album are Steve Hillage (guitar), Lindsay Cooper and vocalists Amanda Parsons, Ann Rosenthal and Barbara Gaskin.

<i>Gong est Mort, Vive Gong</i> 1977 live album by Gong

Gong est Mort, Vive Gong is a double live album by the progressive rock group Gong, recorded on 28 May 1977 at the Hippodrome, Paris, France, and originally released in 1977 as a double LP by Tapioca Records, France.

Uriel were an English psychedelic blues-rock band formed in 1968, consisting of Steve Hillage (guitar/vocals), Dave Stewart (organ), Clive Brooks (drums) and Mont Campbell (bass/vocals). The band produced their sole album under the name Arzachel in June 1969.

Clive Colin Brooks was a drummer, best known for his work in the English progressive rock band Egg.

Pierre Moerlen was a French drummer and percussionist, best known for his work with Gong and Mike Oldfield and as Pierre Moerlen's Gong.

<i>Shamal</i> (album) 1976 studio album by Gong

Shamal is the sixth studio album released under the name Gong and was released by Virgin Records on 13 February 1976 The album, produced by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, was recorded in December 1975 by a unique line-up referred to later as "Shamal-Gong". It is usually regarded as a transitional album between Daevid Allen's incarnation of the band and the Pierre Moerlen-led fusion line-up of the late 1970s.

<i>Xitintoday</i> 1978 studio album by Nik Turners Sphynx

Xitintoday is a studio album released by Nik Turner's Sphynx in 1978. It was produced by Steve Hillage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khan (band)</span> English progressive rock band

Khan were an English progressive rock band of the Canterbury Scene during 1971-1972.

John G. Perry is an American-born British bass guitarist and singer. He was born in the U.S. to British parents and when he was young, the family moved back to England.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "History". dirkcampbell. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 "OVESCO – Our Vision". Archived from the original on 23 November 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mont Campbell biography on Calyx
  4. ↑ "EGG - A CALYX PROFILE". www.calyx-canterbury.fr. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Breznikar, Klemen (6 April 2011). "Arzachel & Egg interview with Mont Campbell". It's Psychedelic Baby! Magazine . Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 25 December 2020.
  6. ↑ Chris Cutler's reminiscences of Ottawa Music Co. on Chris Cutler homepage
  7. ↑ Gilgamesh biography on Calyx
  8. ↑ Williams, Terry (2018). "Dirk Campbell". Classical Matters. Archived from the original on 11 January 2019. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
  9. ↑ Childs, Simon (2023). "Protestor on Why He Ambushed Jacob Rees-Mogg". Novara Media. Archived from the original on 16 May 2023. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
  10. ↑ Somerville, Ewan (2023). "Extinction Rebellion stage invader made music for car adverts". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 17 May 2023. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
  11. ↑ Instrument details on biography, Dirk Campbell homepage
  12. 1 2 Blake, Matt (1 April 2018). "Anna Campbell's father: 'I don't think I had any right to stop her fighting in Syria'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.