Lomond Campbell – Black River Promise: Video Premiere

Hurled into turmoil as a result of being turfed out his rented flat, and eager to flee the clamor and turbulence of the city, Lomond Campbell gave up on urban life and decided to move into a decrepit, asbestos-ridden school deep in the rural highlands of Scotland.

Black River Promise charts Campbell’s transition from white noise to near-silence and sees him reflecting on his new environment via the imagery of his lyrics. This title track is a yearning plea to an enigmatic ‘black river’ to honour a contract to carry him ‘to the mouth of the sea’.

“I started writing this song and the album when I moved into an old derelict school in the highlands,” explains Campbell. “The building had been abandoned for seven years and there was no electricity when I first moved in, so I just amused myself by playing loads of long-form, open tuning finger-picking on my acoustic guitar. This morphed into songs which I recorded in the old school using a simple set-up. Then string arranger Pete Harvey [King Creosote, Modern Studies, The Leg] wrote these amazing, spiralling arrangements over the recordings and an album started to take shape. The strings were recorded in a 500-year-old castle in rural Perthshire with a ten-piece ensemble.

“This particular song is about that weird no-man’s-land you often find yourself in when you’re working away from home a lot – while away you long for home, and when you get back you become restless and want to get away again. Oh aye, it’s a right floor-filler!

“Professor Simon Kirby from the FOUND collective made this weird experimental video for it. It’s seven minutes 23 seconds long….proggy, eh?”

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Black River Promise is released on 25 Nov via Triassic Tusk

Catch Lomond Campbell on tour this week with Kwaing Creasite:

16 Nov – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow
17 Nov – Heart of Hawick, Hawick
18 Nov – Happiness Hotel, Edinburgh (SOLD OUT)
19 Nov – The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen
20 Nov – St Andrew's Sailing Club, St Andrews