Scott Campbell - Photos from the Flood (2019)

These sounds and images were inspired by the family photos recovered from Scott Campbell's parents’ house flood in the summer of 2016.

Scott Campbell is an audiovisual polymath known amongst producers and sound design gearheads for his highly sought-after handmade tape manipulation instruments and drenched, textural passages released as one half of Bell Mountain (with Geoff Dumont). Photos From The Flood—and its’ companion photographic documentary—places Campbell’s latest work squarely at home on 79Ancestors, which finds itself obsessed with releases soundtracking the physical manifestations of personal nostalgia. In this case, the music and visuals explore the leftover evidence of a family photo collection, transformed by a house flood in Louisiana during the summer of 2016.

Awash with muted and distant vignettes, each song weaves in and out of barely-decipherable evidence of melody in decay, not unlike the warped state of the photo albums which left the artist and his family struggling to see the beauty through destruction during the aftermath of the floods. “Many of the pictures were totally ruined, but the way the colors had run and smeared created beautiful abstractions.”

The music feels like a peek into a half-preserved state, reflecting on the subtle suggestion of song while at other times gauzy folk tunes surface like lost rehearsal tapes. The warmth and melancholy succeed beyond the common tactical gimmick built into other ambient cassette music, and the sense of loss is palpable as evidenced in the completely unrecognizable keepsakes discovered while sorting through the salvage with his brothers and parents: “It was a glimpse into their past that I hadn't seen much of before, to see these pictures while sitting in their (our) house as it was literally being torn apart was an indescribable feeling.”