Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To speak a language of love and sensuality without words is to acknowledge that poetry exists in many forms, that communication is not all down to verbal sound, and that human existence, human tragedy and joy don’t always need talking over.

To stand between silence and the projection of the voice is the sound of the instrumental, and in The Great Escape from ego and the uncomfortable, perhaps even muzzled, suppression of expression, there stands the influence and involved manifestation of the sound, the character of leaping into the unknown and eluding both ends of the spectrum, the silence and cacophony of the unfiltered human voice.

On of the beauties to be found in any instrumental album is that the imagination is encouraged to flow, to interpret in greater depth the meaning, the passion behind the music, and so it is with sheer magnetism that Neil Campbell scatters the seeds of musical translation with accuracy and devilish smile as his album The Great Escape takes root in the listener’s mind. 

Across the tracks, all delivered with a svelteness of hand and intricacy of mind, Incident In Rio, Solar Monarch, Don And Walt’s Hawaiian Excursion, Another Estuary, Spanish Feat, Jazz Hands, and the album’s title track, The Great Escape, there is not just interpretation to be played with, not only meaning, deciphering the mood, there is the joy of the unknown lyric that may have been waiting at the door, unrevealed but alluded to, and it is then left to the listener to place the appropriate scene in context; and it is a joint game, a combination of inspiration that makes the album take on a joy as well as an excellent groove.

Art in such glorious delivery is that perfect sense of escape, if a recording such as the one on offer by Neil Campbell can produce such feelings of intense, boundless freedom, then it has not only done its job, it has committed the listener to seeking out a truth, one that must be removed from its cage and given the independence to express itself; in that The Great Escape is a liberty in itself, and one that Mr. Campbell is assuredly the man who allowed, encouraged the instrumental free will to flow.

Ian D. Hall