Acoustic form, visual thinking and collaborative continuity shape a new double album release from Liverpool’s world-class guitarist.
Neil Campbell’s Diagonals: An Anthology (2020–2026) arrives as a quietly assured statement of intent — a double album that resists the pull of immediacy in favour of patience, form and long-view listening.
Released Friday 6 March 2026, Diagonals gathers together four short-form releases issued between 2020 and 2026 and presents them, for the first time, as a unified physical work. The mini-albums The Forest Dwellers, Berlin Suite & Other Short Stories, Journey Into Space and the newly completed Diagonals were all originally released digitally and in relative isolation. Heard now as a single, remastered double album, they reveal a coherence that feels both deliberate and quietly revelatory.
“Assembling these short collections,” Campbell explains, “has allowed me to remaster the audio to create a double-album length experience that flows as a single piece of work, with a unified approach to composition, performance and production throughout.”
That sense of flow is central to Diagonals. Campbell’s music — rooted in acoustic guitar but drawing freely from contemporary classical, jazz, progressive rock and minimalist traditions — has always favoured structure over spectacle. Across these 31 tracks, the listener is drawn into a sound world built from intricate layers of interlocking guitars, subtle electronics, understated percussion and moments of unaccompanied intimacy. Nothing is rushed; nothing is overstated.
The anthology opens with Diagonals (2026), a ten-piece suite that acts as both conceptual anchor and tonal blueprint. Dedicated to visual artist Ken Horton, whose painting Diagonals provides the album artwork, the music explores the relationship between visual and musical form. “Some of the pieces,” Campbell notes, “are based on configurations of fingers on the guitar’s fretboard, while others use musical arrangements as metaphors for visual phenomena.” Tracks like Circles, Ascent and Polarities feel spatial as much as melodic — music that suggests movement, balance and perspective rather than narrative resolution.
From there, the anthology moves through earlier works that feel newly contextualised. Journey Into Space (2023), inspired by the poetry of Seán Street, was originally developed for a live collaboration at Liverpool’s Writing on the Wall Festival. The suite alternates between concise guitar miniatures and fragments of longer process-driven compositions, deliberately playing with scale and duration. “The intention,” Campbell says, “was to explore the relationship between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ time,” positioning the work as a conceptual companion to his symphonic instrumental album Faldum.
If Journey Into Space stretches time, Berlin Suite & Other Short Stories (2022) deepens emotional space. Created with long-time collaborator Nicole Collarbone, the centrepiece Berlin Suite unfolds over ten minutes with a measured, almost cinematic patience. Guitar and cello circle one another in restrained dialogue, while elsewhere the gentle sway of Hoobie Tango and the affectionate Ode to a Penguin — a nod to the Penguin Cafe Orchestra — add warmth and subtle wit. Reflecting on its inclusion here, Campbell notes, “This music was released in quite disparate fashion over several years, and I’m very pleased it’s now been gathered together in one home.”
That idea of “home” resonates throughout Diagonals. Campbell’s work is outward looking, but it is also deeply rooted — in long-term collaborations, in Liverpool’s creative ecosystem, and in an ongoing commitment to developing a distinctive approach to multi tracked guitar music. The Forest Dwellers (2020), which closes the anthology, returns to something elemental: four short acoustic vignettes composed in the period following Last Year’s News. Dedicated to producer and engineer Jon Lawton, these pieces feel reflective rather than nostalgic — moments of stillness that sit comfortably alongside the more expansive works elsewhere on the album.
“Across all this music,” Campbell reflects, “we’ve developed new, distinctive and perhaps unique approaches and techniques for producing multi-tracked guitar music.” It’s a statement borne out not through virtuoso display, but through clarity, restraint and an unwavering trust in the material.
Diagonals: An Anthology (2020–2026) is not a greatest-hits compilation, nor a convenient retrospective. It’s a considered act of curation — a way of allowing works originally released in fragments to speak to one another across time. For long-standing listeners, it reframes familiar material; for newcomers, it offers a compelling entry point into one of Liverpool’s most quietly distinctive musical voices.
The album is released on CD and digital formats on 6 March 2026, with an album launch concert that same evening at R&H Wines, Allerton Road, Liverpool — an intimate setting that feels entirely appropriate for music that rewards close attention.
Sometimes, looking diagonally reveals connections you’d otherwise miss.
For more info visit neilcampbell.bandcamp.com.
