Birchville Cat Motel
Birchville Cat Motel is a one-man experimental music group formed by Campbell Kneale from Wellington, New Zealand. Although largely unknown in his home country, Kneale has toured throughout Japan, America, Europe, and Australia. His first vinyl release was Jewelled Wings on the Freedom From label. Many of Kneale's rare and out of print recordings have been reissued recently on a 6cdr collection entitled Chaos Steel Skeletons.
Birchville Cat Motel & Yellow Swans
Yellow Swans & Birchville Cat Motel is the first collaboration between these two underground phenomenons. Both groups have amassed sturdy back catalogs and a great deal of critical acclaim. This collaboration was recorded entirely in New Zealand both live and in the studio.
Curved Surface Destroyer
3CD live retrospective covering '98-2006 & incl. shows in New Zealand, Japan, Denmark & Scotland. Shows the evolution of sound from the mid 90's slowly emerging drone-fields to the more dynamic sound. He's assembled the best possible overview of his work under one title, w/out rehashing any material from previous releases
Siberian Earth Curve
Siberian Earth Curve is a tour de force of sound manipulation. Kneale plays his instruments (guitars, cymbals, flute, appliances) like an egg beater. What is left for the ears is only filtered noise. Snakes Bark Maple is a 17-minute symphony of harsh drones, sometimes imitating ethnic music and sometimes cacophonous and abstrat. Lux is 10 minutes of quiet, distant echoes that sound like a ghost wailing from a grave. Fake Fur Pond is a vortex of sirenes that winds up in a terrifying crescendo. Th…
Gunpowder temple of heaven
Birchville Cat Motel is the project of New Zealander Campbell Kneale, who has from his base in Lower Hutt since the mid 90-ies established himself as the leading voice of this generation of NZ sound artists. Gunpowder Temple of Heaven is a new highlight in his extensive discography. A single 40 minute long-form piece that keeps building and unfolding; heaven for drone-noise enthusiasts. The CD comes with a booklet with a complete Birchville discography as well as liner-notes by Bruce Russell. Fr…
Seventh Ruined Hex
A further step out in Birchville Cat Motel's ruminations on time space distortion featuring the additional mystikal talents of fellow gravity destroyer, Matthew Bower (Hototogisu-Sunroof!), Seventh Ruined Hex presents like a lonesome planet, occassionally struck with super-sized fragments of space detritus, but for the most part just hangs around, spinning on its axis and doing fuck-all. Strangely emotive for 'a buncha noise'. Like the deepest love, its warm yet tenuous, and filled with the ever…
Birchville Cat Motel . Bruce Russell
1: Recorded live at Adam Art Gallery, Wellington. Overdubbed at C/Psi/P, Lower Hutt. 2, 3: Postal exchange recorded in Lyttleton and Lower Hutt. 4: Live collaboration recorded at Adam Art Gallery, Wellington. 5: Postal exchange recorded live in Christchurch and overdubbed in Lower Hutt. 6: Postal exchange recorded in Lyttleton and Lower Hutt, additional tracks recorded live in High Street, Christchurch.
30th december 2004
New York is pretty different from Lower Hutt. In a lot of ways. But that doesn't mean New York is BAD... its just 'different', y'know? I was down the Lower East Side recently with the guy from Sonic Youth. He was as cool as he looked in Rip It Up magazine! We tuned our guitars and bagpipes, the lights sunk in anticipation, and we buried the audience in a cloud of fairy-dust so thick you could eat it with chopsticks and people with shovels tried to dig their way out of it but it just got deeper …
Three sparkling echoes
Doomy, magisterial drone works, xylophone tones dragged behind trucks ploughing straight through mountains of mud and some classically wasted drum/horizontal blades nod-out ritual ala Outside The Dream Syndicate from this inspired hook-up that pairs Campbell Kneale's orchestra with Anla Courtis of Reynols.
Chi vampires
Unleash the bats! Taking yet another quantum-physics-defying leap towards the pulsing, stereophonic ‘om', Birchville Cat Motel reaches out for the moon once more from his precarious ladder of pins. Aided by a reflection-destroying sense of... er... 'one-note melody', the level of spiritual catharsis contained within these zeros and ones out-bleeds even the most core-shattering moments of ‘Beautiful Speck Triumph'. Shadowy powers are hereby summoned... blackening forces creep... and ‘Chi Vampires…