A Kendal man has completed his ninth album at 63-years-old.
Neil Stevenson has been making electronic genre-crossing progressive dance music since 1978 after he became obsessed with it as a teenager.
Under his artist name Celestium, he has just finished his ninth album, Absolutely Unacceptable How Dare You, which he describes as a protest against current political and environmental issues – including the rise of AI.
It is the first album Neil has released since 2009 and it also marks his first venture into exploring political issues in his music.
Neil’s latest album weaves words spoken by world leaders, scientists and other well known people – including Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Stephen Hawking – into his music through a process called ‘warping’ which makes them sound like rap.
Neil said: “It’s an absolute labour of love, and thanks to a knee injury which has forced me to stay at home for half a year, my studio has literally saved me from going mad, although some people hearing it might say I am mad.
“But I’m more proud of this album than any other, by a mile, mostly because my despair of human-made global problems have totally influenced it. It was like, how can I put out new music and not say something about such important stuff?
“I am actually really concerned about major world issues and about how the world is being run for a few people caring about their own ends rather than the rest of the world and the environment.
“It’s become my personal protest. I have followed what other people have tried to do about global problems and all you see is Just Stop Oil chucking paint over paintings or stopping traffic and frustrating people, I think people need to be engaged en masse.
“So I’ve decided to make a musical protest that people can listen to and hopefully think the music is alright too.”
Neil has also used AI to create his album cover – a topic of which he explores in one of his tracks, making use of words from the likes of Elon Musk.
The cover art features Neil’s own face and the faces of his friends – who have supported him through his making of the album – holding protest placards.
Neil has spent years creating and funding his music through day jobs including working on an oil rig and as a Geography teacher.
But his interest in electronic music first emerged on a rainy school day.
He said: “I had absolutely no interest in music at all initially, I’m autistic, so I get obsessions about things and I’m totally uninterested in other things.
“I kind of really didn’t like the music that my parents were playing all the time at home. But one day at school when I was 13 I was out in the playground and it just started chucking it down with rain.
“I ran into the nearest classroom, which happened to be the music classroom, and somebody was playing Kraftwerk’s Autobahn.
“I just went up to them and said what’s this, it’s great, I’ve never heard anything like it, what are they using to make the music, it’s not any instrument I’ve heard before.
“He said they were using a synthesiser. From then on I was very interested in electronic music, and badgered my mum and dad for pocket money to buy Kraftwerk albums.”
Neil bought his first synthesiser in 1978 after a lucky meeting with two members of The Human League while they were still starting out.
He said: “My closest friends, the other weirdos of the school, they got into punk, and they started dragging me down to punk gigs and I quite enjoyed that because it was non-judgemental and the people were very nice.
“So I went to this punk nightclub and there was an unknown new band coming along called The Human League.
“They had just started and 29 people showed up at the gig. Afterwards, I sat with them and asked them how synthesizers work.
“Unbelievably, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, the two synth guys who left the band to form Heaven 17, took me back on the stage and showed me.
“They let me play around and were showing me how to do things, it was a life-changing moment and I was totally hooked.
“Two days later I was on a train to London with all of the money I’d saved in a Post Office account and bought a synthesiser.
“I’ve still got it today, it cost me £80 because I got it second hand, and it’s now worth £30,000 because it’s so rare and I’ve been using it since and I’ve used it on the new album.”
It wasn’t until Neil reached his 40s that he was officially diagnosed with autism.
He said: “When I was in school I was very aware I was unlike any of the other boys. I had to figure out what would make them laugh, because by being funny, I was included in the social stuff.
“That meant it was constantly difficult at and because I was at school in the 60s and 70s there was no diagnosis back then.
“But years later in my forties when I was doing an observation day as part of my PGCE training I spent a week in a school for people with special needs.
“I went to one classroom and I was asked to sit with a table of children who were all on the spectrum and there was one boy sat next to me that it was like looking at me back in time.
“I suddenly thought now I know what it is and what it has been all my life and why I’m different. So I went to my GP and said what had happened, the referral took two years and when it came back it was very thorough and I was told yes, you are autistic.”
Neil said he has found his autism to be an advantage in composing music.
He added: “It definitely is an advantage when composing music, I can totally lose myself in it all for hours.
“It takes some concentration when each piece of music might have 50 different tracks, and every tiniest sound is very carefully crafted. I’m totally obsessed. The new album is the result of 50 to 60 hour weeks in the studio, for the past 18 months.
“Music is very central in my life, I lose myself in it, sometimes I’ll come out of it and think oh crickey I’m thirsty or hungry, it sounds terrible but I’ll get a cold can of beans and then go straight back in.”
Neil has also learnt to use TikTok to share his music with a wider audience and said feedback to his album so far has been overwhelmingly positive.
He said: “Generally so far the reception of the album has been very good, it’s already had several hundred digital downloads and people have been sending messages I wasn’t expecting like ‘this is outstanding’ and ‘exquisite’ and ‘the best electronic music they’d heard in years’.
“So it’s an exciting time at the moment because I’m getting a lot of positive feedback.”
Neil is set to host an album launch party next month at The Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury on August 16 and said he is also looking to perform locally in Kendal and is open to venues interested in working with him.
In the future, he is aiming to create another album and is also planning to collaborate with other local artists and his daughter, who is a singer.
His new album can be downloaded digitally now or it can be pre-ordered as a CD for August 16 on Bandcamp.
