Birchville Cat Motel - White Ground Elder (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2002)

*** sorry no cover art ***

1-01 White Ground Elder 31:36
1-02 Mounted Archers Fortress 25:11
2-01 Lamplight Devotions 32:13
2-02 The Romance Of Certain Old Clothes 21:24

Tour double DCr

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Birchville Cat Motel & Anla Courtis - Three Sparkling Echoes (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2007)

1 First Sparkling Echo 12:23
2 Second Sparkling Echo 12:13
3 Third Sparkling Echo 14:13


We're sort of surprised this match up hadn't already happened before. Pretty much a no brainer. Campbell Kneale, aka Birchville Cat Motel, and Anla Courtis, from the now defunct Reynols. While it most definitely seems like a match made in noise rock heaven, there was definitely the potential for a very chaotic mess, but the two most definitely brought out the best in each other, and the result might just be one of our favorite releases from either of these guys.
Three looooong tracks, each a gorgeous and languorous slow build, minimal, but dense and heavily layered, simple propulsive rhythms, and all sorts of warm rich sonic textures. The opener, is maybe one of the most beautiful 'noise rock' tracks EVER. Swirling, beautiful cello-like melodies, low and lumbering, moan and croon, a deep, resonant, cavernous, creeping minor key dirge, lurking mysteriously beneath a swirling cloud of metallic cicadas and oscillating whirs and flutters. One of those tracks that should go on forever. Building gradually in intensity, but never exploding into full on heaviness, instead just drifting dreamlike, until the various sounds peel back leaving just a gorgeous soundscape of simulated nature sounds and abstract ambience. The first time we threw this on we ended up listening to this track 3 or 4 times in a row. But as soon as we could tear ourselves away, we realized that the other two tracks were darn near just as beautiful.
The second track is a spacious and spare expanse of tinkling music box chimes, strange percussive thumps, guttural vocalizations, and a warm melodic whir, heavily panned, swooping dramatically from speaker to speaker. Those swoops eventually transforming into thick slabs of guitar whir, a gorgeously glacial epic, rife with muted melodies, and dense with sonic subtleties...
The closer pretty much seals the deal. Simple tribal drums, clattery junkyard percussion, over warbly warped FX drenched guitars and a loping dirge-like rhythm building in intensity until the guitars become a huge tangly squall above that static mesmerizing rhythm. It's almost like a noise rock Tom Waits.... like the Black Rider performed by Sunroof! Or a super blissed out take on old Swans. Guitars so thick and warm you just want to curl up and climb under, letting that clattery motorik rhythm just carry you away...
Aquarius Records

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Birchville Cat Motel - Creeping Frost Onset (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2002)

1 Creeping Frost Onset (54:18)

Quand Campbell Kneale aidé de deux membres de sa famille se met aux toy instruments...

We at AQ have long been fans of Campbell Kneale and his project Birchville Cat Motel who along with the Dead C, Omit, Gate and a handful of others have helped to define one of the richest free-rock-noise-drone scenes in the world. For years Kneale has been releasing cds, lps and cassettes (most of them quite limited) of noisy electronic soundscapes and gorgeous organic drones. So when we discovered Kneale also ran a label, we figured it was definitely worth checking out. And how right we were. Not only is all of the music on Celebrate Psi Phenomena amazing, but the packaging is perfectly and stunningly designed as well (quite nice considering this is a cd-r label. See our crappy cd-r packaging rants in the last three or four lists) with each cd in a plastic sleeve nestled between two sheets of old fashioned textured wallpaper, printed, and sealed with a gold star.
Another slab of prime drone from CPP main man Campbell Kneale, this time enlisting the help of two Kneale family members and utilising oscillators, turntables, clarinet, violin, motorized acoustic guitar, bowed roof (!) and various toy instruments. Starting with a dog whistle range sine wave that wavers and flutters on its way to your eardrum, it's soon joined by complementary (but no less piercing) harmonics as well as a barely audible low end pulse. You gotta be patient with this one. After about ten minutes, the high end shimmer becomes the foundation for a cacophony of clang and strum and feedback and clatter eventually breaking down into what sounds like a primitive preschool free jazz jam session. Toy pianos, caveman percussion, with spurts of beeping and squeaking and lots of noodling that eventually works its way back up to a shrieking, skronky free jazz drone ending in a meditative jazzy free rock shimmer...Nice.
Aquarius Records

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Birchville Cat Motel - September (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2002)

1 September (59:03)

Japanese tour CDr, limited to 100 copies.

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Birchville Cat Motel - Firepower Fragrant Cloud (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2005)

1 Gigantic Planetary Collapse (29:34)
2 Firepower Fragrant Cloud (32:14)

Tour CD de 2005, deux longs drones...

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Birchville Cat Motel - The Frog Prince (Anthem Records, 2007)

1 The Frog Prince (5:05)

Riffs de guitare en boucle et choeurs de grenouilles....

It begins with a strange collection of vocalizations, duck calls, metallic shimmers, distant moans, alien rhythms, and what sounds like monkeys or maybe crickets, a dense tangle of sounds that swirl and intertwine before giving way to a propulsive metallic groove, a chugging guitar, plodding drums, but all beneath a mighty chorus of croaking frogs (hence the title?)! It sounds a bit like the main riff from Judas Priest's "You Got Another Thing Coming" looped over and over. And throw in the frogs and suddenly you've got some crazy mix of Circle's Andexelt and Sounds Of North American Frogs, and that is a very good thing indeed.
Aquarius Records


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Birchville Cat Motel - Blankangelspace (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 1999)

1 Untitled (18:18)
2 Untitled (39:46)

Deux documents en live...

Two live documents....

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Birchville Cat Motel & Reynols - Split (Reverse Recordings, 2004)

A1 Reynols Live In London In Paris (20:06)
B1 Birchville Cat Motel Mercy Shall Ride + These Darkening Orbits (20:14)

Drones lourds par les argentins Reynols et Birchville Cat Motel....

One side is featuring the outstanding now disbanded outrockers Reynols from Argentina, doing a 20 minute heavy drone session. The session was originally broadcast live on March 14th 2003 via Resonance FM from Paris to London. This is one of the more accessible Reynols recordings, but still unmistakable Reynols. The other side is featuring the equally outstanding Birchville Cat Motel from New Zealand doing a highly sensible and multilayered studio recording, that really shows the best sides of this great musician. Sloooww noise or ambient music without the sleaze element. Pauline Oliveros once described Reynols as deep heavy listening metal, a term that also seems to fit the drones of Birchville Cat Motel perfectly. In any case this is recording that will take dronefans to droneheaven. This release is limited to 208 copies pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Artworks by Reynols. Each record comes with an individual photograph.

Second Layer Records

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Birchville Cat Motel & Bruce Russell - Untitled (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2000)

1 Aropax
2 Playing With Fire
3 Pylon Conquests
4 The Makrocosmical Adam
5 Sugar Grey Paper
6 Absinthe

Drones bruitistes par Birchville Cat Motel et Bruce Russell....

Noisy drones by Birchville Cat Motel and Bruce Russell...

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Birchville Cat Motel - Astro Catastrophies (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2007)

1-1 Sublime Prince Of The Royal Secret (17:24)
1-2 Driving Golden Dopamine (14:08)
1-3 Divinity Soldiers (16:58)
2-1 Damn Infinity Hairtie II (4:47)
2-2 Cast Iron Bling Bling (19:55)
2-3 Driving Black Seratonin (15:03)
2-4 Four Freckle Constellation (9:35)
3-1 We Flare Into Scarlet (16:38)
3-2 Hells Silver Titans (16:12)
3-3 Damn Infinity Hairtie (17:03)

Du drone, et du bien lourd...

The opening track on Astro Catastrophies, this brand new triple disc set from Birchville Cat Motel, finds BCM tackling the RIFF, the static drone and blurred soundscape of past releases converted into a sort of druggy stoner rock, a hypnotic metallic krautrock. Think some minimal blissed out version of Kyuss, Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Gore, and Skullflower at their riffiest. In fact the sound here is similar to the transformation Skullflower went through when they released Exquisite Fucking Boredom. Harnessing all that free noise into churning spaced out riffage.
"Sublime Prince Of The Royal Secret" begins like any other BCM record, drifting black clouds of low end churn, leaning toward the more overt heaviness of BCM offshoot Black Boned Angel, but then the drums drop, and the riff unfurls, a huge sun baked, blown out, glacial crush, looped and mesmerizing, repeated and robotic, the drums pounding, a gorgeously heavy and hypnotic dirge. In the background though is an epic expanse of grinding murk, and glistening shimmer, keening coruscating sheets of bassy rrrroooaaar, haunting chimes, and howling feedback, building until the riff and the rhythms are swallowed up completely.
The rest of disc one follows a similar pattern, long drawn out smears of processed guitar, dense and roiling, muddy percussion and downtuned melodies, that seems as if they might drift on and on forever, before once again, the rhythm and the riff kick in, on "Driving Golden Dopamine", it's some unlikely splatter of clapping, that gives way to a strange stuttering Spacemen Three like riff over a motorik drum machine rhythm, and on "Divinity Soldiers", the washed out high end ur-drone becomes a chugging Hawkwind style doper up outer space exploration, relentless and intense, once again wreathed in glistening, glimmering shimmers of sound.
The other two discs are just as heavy, and riffy and kick ass, each track subverting the riff, turning it into some blissed out BCM cloud of sound, but rocking in a way Birchville never really did before. Andee had been bugging Kneale to record a record next time he was in SF, with him playing BIG LOUD drums, thinking it would be an amazing combo, a crushing rhythm section sunk into a dense black hole of buzz and drone, and damn if this doesn't come pretty close.
From stuttering single notes peppering a shuffling rhythm, the whole thing processed into machinelike loops, to almost My Bloody Valentine style blown out metallic bliss pop, to almost choral sounding streaks of glimmering high end sparkles over blurred guitars and fluttering melodies, to super chaotic kitchen sink clatter demarcated by a blooping bleeping drum machine, to the truly bizarre "Hells Silver Titans", that begins as a glorious chime flecked drone, but suddenly erupts into straight up AC/DC riffage (so much so that we're still not entirely convince It's not just a sample, and actually, after more listens we're convinced it absolutely is, a single riff, the clicking hi-hat, chopped and looped into a simple, head nodding jam, like Philip Glass composing with classic rock riffs, and finally, "Damn Infinity Hairtie", which closes the set with a slab of buzzing black noise, going from grim funereal low end, to amp destroying FX drenched stun guitar psychnoise freakout.
As with all Celebrate Psi Phenomenon releases, packaged in that immediately recognizable wall paper sleeve, with three printed inserts, one for each disc...
Aquarius Records

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Birchville Cat Motel - Cranes Are Sleeping (Ecstatic Peace!, 2000)

A1 Airlike Metal Web
A2 An Emperors Second Ascension
B1 Sex Layer Cake
B2 Cranes Are Sleepin
B3 Love, Lies, Bleeding

Bruit et drones...

Noise and drones...

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Birchville Cat Motel - Curved Surface Destroyer (Last Visible Dog, 2006)

1-1 Reversing Spiral Galaxies (27:54)
1-2 Fairy Teeth (29:46)
2-1 Zenkoji (Mounted Archers Fortress) (30:13)
2-2 Copenhagen (40:53)
3-1 Drawn Towards Chanting Hordes (29:51)
3-2 Kanji Email Dreaming (30:58)

Un motel sur le bord de la route, à l'entrée d'une petite ville de Nouvelle-Zélande. Les passants ou rares touristes s'arrêtent parfois à la vue du cadavre exquis formé par la superposition des deux panneaux, celui indiquant le nom de la ville, et celui indiquant le motel. Au même moment, quelque part ailleurs dans le pays, une maison de banlieue, une cabane de jardin. Un professeur d'arts plastiques de lycée s'y est enfermé en silence, et se balance, envoûté, au-dessus de sa table de mixage, casque sur les oreilles, enceintes débranchées, pour ne pas réveiller les voisins. Occupé à engendrer quelques larsens pour essayer son nouvel ampli, il venait de se rendre compte qu'il tenait là la clef d'un univers sonore inoui.

Dix ans plus tard, un peu moins, aux antipodes, une dizaine de personnes reposent, allongées, bras croisés, yeux fermés, sourire aux lèvres, sur le sol collant d'une petite salle de concerts metal. Trois espaces-temps irrémédiablement liés par une même manifestation cosmique : le musique de Birchville Cat Motel.

C'est là d'ailleurs son plus grand intérêt. Indéchiffrable, irrésistiblement mystérieux, alimenté par des semblants de sens trompeurs (les titres, toujours superbes : Drawn Towards Chanting Hordes - voilà qui décrirait parfaitement BCM), l'univers de Birchville a toujours eu quelque chose de profondément cosmique, évoquant le lent mouvement muet d'astres lointains, solitaires, indifférents. En compilant six morceaux live enregistrés entre 1998 et 2005, Curved Surface Destroyer en documente l'évolution. Des drones hiératiques du début, illustrés ici par le premier CD, aux entrelacs sonores et métalliques les plus récents, avec leurs rythmiques décalées (comme sur Our Love Will Destroy The World, cette année aussi), Birchville est le parfait exemple contemporain du sublime kantien en musique : trop grandiose pour être rationalisé ou reproduit en mots. Une différence essentielle avec les projets electro-drone/no-input les plus ambitieux, ou signés des plus grands noms, embourbés dans leur condition de naissance trop simplement humaine, trop franchement fabriqués à la main. Rien, à part Birchville, ne peut vous faire douter ainsi de l'origine du son inscrit sur le disque. Du coup, s'ouvre un imaginaire absolument unique dans le monde de l'improvisation actuel.

Curved Surface Destroyer est, en quelque sorte, le troisième album de Birchville cette année. Après Our Love Will Destroy The World sur PseudoArcana (le label d'Antony Milton), qui comptait déjà deux morceaux réédités ; et les 6 CD des outtakes et faces B des trois volumes de Chaos Steel Skeletons, ce triple-CD marque le retour de Campbell Kneale sur Last Visible Dog, le vénérable label américain qui avait déjà sorti l'indispensable double Beautiful Speck Triumph il y a deux ans. Trois fois deux pistes d'une trentaine de minutes, enregistrés live en Nouvelle-Zélande, Suède, Japon et Danemark, trois heures redéployant la lente et sûre évolution du son Birchville. Qui nous surprendra lorsqu'il éditera un CD qualifiable autrement que d'indispensable. Et si on ne pourra jamais vraiment le décrire, il faudra continuer de parler du motel du chat de Birchville, pour inciter à venir le découvrir...

Webzine Mille Feuilles

To the person who has slapped you in the face with the "it all sounds the same" argument when they hear your fine wine drone collection: fucking listen to this 3 cd retrospective by Birchville Cat Motel and cry your eyes out at the sheer beauty and power of it. The good folk at Last Visible Dog have collected a series of Birchville Cat Motel live shows and created this massive slab of drone evolution courtesy of New Zealander Campbell Kneale, the sole inhabitant of the BC Motel.

There's nothing irrelevant here, each of the three discs include at least one masjestic piece. The first disc opens with the domestic (1998, Wellington, NZ) performed, Reversing Spiral Galaxies. It's easily the smoothest, most sleek piece on the album. Not yet feeling like the arctic storms he's been conjuring on his more recent pieces, more like looking through the window of and arctic shack, feeling cold but not actually feeling the icy streams across your face. The second piece on the first disc, Fairy Teeth, dates from 2000 and the progress Kneale's made is stunning. Starting with what sounds like a distorted sine wave, rapidly builds up to a thick reverberating drone teaming with startling energy and strength before really developing in a organic, moving mass of possessed effects buzzing like a monstrous herde of giant killerbees chasing you to the end of the world.

All the pieces on Curved Surface Destroyer clock in around half an hour, each disc comprised of two performances. The second disc contains a performance from 20001 in what seems like the perfect spot for this Eastern tinged drone: the Senkoji temple in Osaka, Japan. As with Fairy Teeth, Zenkoji (Mounted Archers Fortress) brims with energy, this time provided by the scraping feedback of rusted guitarsnares and a low buzzing background drone. It's eerie, crawling through the mud vibe is strangely beautiful and very much in sync with any mysterious temple vibe. The forty minutes of Copenhagen are even more spellbinding. It's layers of fizzing and sparkling bells reaching such a majestic, dense point, you're waiting for it to explode in a zillion tiny shards of crystal and while that doesn't really happen it eventually melts into a giant stream of megadrones. It's gorgeous, like a pair of your favourite thighs around your waist.

Birchville Cat Motel's evolution from the sleek first track to it's last, furious finale, is a major treat to any drone fanatic. The last disc's first track Drawn Towards Chanting Hordes was performed during last year's Instal festival in Glasgow and encompasses every BCM side heard on this compilation. It's his most complete and life affirming effort on this exhaustive compilation. Waves of megadrone build up to form the aural equivalent of floating icemountains through frozen arctic oceans until an orchestra of highly pitched bells join the parade and the deep and beautiful sound of bagpipes surface. It all comes together as a giant mixture of an amped up Harmonia meets a downtuned, early incarnation of Pelt. It even boasts a psychrock superending with smashing drums and a mesmerizing bagpipe solo.

The feverous drone that starts off the album's last track, Kanji Email Dreaming keeps it's steady pace throughout the whole duration of the track while sporadic washes of bellsounds rain down and the occasional snaredrum sports an irregular heartbeat. It's not as fascinating as Drawn Towards Chanting Hordes but compared to the album's first two pieces it's just so alive, like it's a beast on it's own. To stand out isn't always easy but Kneale has made it his absolute strongest point. The drone universe wouldn't be the same without this guy, you can bet your last dollar on it.
Foxy Digitalis

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