| 1. In January 2022, upended his life and moved across the globe to Lithuania. This was a culminating step in a long search for creative freedom and a love affair with the Baltic world that started years before. Campbell took with him a collection of unfinished songs intended for his next release, and with the help of a cast of artists met during his travels, he has finally brought it to full manifestation. The result is “Between The Fool & The Magician,” an album treading a thin middle path, ruminating about questions with no answers, and answers to questions you didn’t ask |
| 2. Campbell presents his well-known eclectic folk style, honed and imported from the mountains and coastal forests of Western Canada, in a contemporary old-world context. Guitar and voice are ambitiously aided by a myriad of instruments including accordion, harmonium, shruti box, melodium, kanklės, jaw-harp, even a birch vanta . The narrative twists between anthemic expressions of gruelling outer circumstances represented by a hard stone city , and contrasts these with pastoral ballads representing a secret inner world serving as a refuge from outer turmoil . With an added dose of psychedelic misrule, these deep introspections find balance and levity through the freedom only found in joyous chaos. As the sun sets on a European city, an alchemical process begins to take place in the space of one night. A threshold is passed under a city gate, the Blackened Mother appears, an outer journey turns inward … and then spirals outward again |
| 3. Joining on this journey is a cast of international wyrd-folk characters. Foremost is English expat Adam Ormes, a kindred spirit also seeking transformation in strange lands. Ormes lends his hands to percussion, mostly on a trusty shamanic drum and a variety of atmospheric and sacred percussive instruments. His voice can be heard on backing vocals and orating the immolating track Guardian of the Threshold. Swiss-Canadian Æmber adds layers of resonant cello and her voice to tracks recorded earlier in Canada and carried over the sea. German neofolk legend ART ABSCONs contributes a swirling, psychedelic guitar solo to the track Black Madonna at the Gate of Dawn and a recitation of Rudolf Steiner’s words on the closing track, Sunrise. The band is also joined by two names well-known in the Lithuanian folk-milieu. The first is Agota Zdanavičiūtė, also of SEN SVAJA, and a rising star as a solo artist in her home city of Vilnius, working to popularize the kanklės, a traditional instrument of Lithuania and the wider Baltic region. The second is Virginija Pievos, veteran of the Lithuanian folk-rock group PIEVOS and now a solo-recording artist in her own right. Virginija and Ian struck up a fast friendship, and despite having to communicate through translators, have played several concerts together. Virginija plays flute, a traditional recorder from her region called a lumzdėlis, and hurdy-gurdy |
| 4. Crafted by the band’s new label, Ætheric Recordings, the LP version will come with several extra elements for a full sensory experience. Including a unique hand-made incense called Guardian of the Threshold, recommended to be burned during the playing of the album |
| 5. 1.01 - - Between The Fool & The Magician |
| 6. 1.02 - - Repine in Soporific Fields |
| 7. 1.03 - - Guardian of the Threshold |
| 8. 1.04 - - Black Madonna At the Gate of Dawn |
| 9. 1.05 - - They Speak to Us |
| 10. 1.06 - - Raganų Ratilai |
| 11. 1.07 - - Arms of the Mountain |
| 12. 1.08 - - The May Queen's Fading Astral Light |
| 13. 1.09 - - Sunrise |
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