Birchville Cat Motel - Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven [Pica Disk 2008]
Another month, another review about a release somehow related to Lasse Marhaug, and if only as release number four on his new found label Picadisk. Check out Hild Sofje Tafjord, Hijokaidan and the Incapacitants as well as one of his recent solo releases “it’s not the end of the world” to get an impression on the restlesness and workload of this man. But this review is not about Lasse Marhaug, but about another guy who has never spent a minute in his live leaning back and enjoying some time doing nothing at all, it seems. For some time I thought I had a pretty good impression on the work of Campell Kneale aka Birchville Cat Motel and that I was aware of the range of releases he has under his belt, but then comes “gunpowder temple of heaven” and there is a three page discography of Birchville Cat Motel in there, that lists 21 Compact discs, five full albums, a long list of 7 to 10 inch records, an even longer list of CD-R releases and where the heck will I ever be able to get some of those 15 tape releases mentioned here. Somehow I feel I need the “Chaos Steel Skeleton” 6CDR box release noted in here.
More to the fact, this discography shows that New Zealander Campell Kneale has been around basically forever and has done collaborations with many artists around the world, from Fear Falls Burning to Anla Courtis, from the Yellow Swans to Lee Ranaldo and from Bruce Russell to Guilty Connector. To some he is also known for his work in the band Black Boned Angel, who had a hype for two or three months around here, which faded when none of their music was available. In all this time and all this variants of musical expression Kneale has formed a unique sonar language that derives from the guitar and which he displays to perfect execution and emotional impact on “gunpowder temple of heaven.”
The disc contains one, epic track that seems to make time stand still. It starts with somebody turning on the switch and then nothing seems to move anymore. Taking a step closer into the dense, flirring wall of sound there is actually a multitude of dynamics and movement, when layers upon layers of sounds are shifted and shoved, manipulated and mingled. I just realised that Bruce Russell uses exactly the same metaphor – about time standing still – in his liner notes to the CD, so it seems that this effect is almost universal. Anyway, I will have to find a new metaphor quickly. Hm, I decide for immersion. The situation where emotional and physiological control is taken away completely and the human mind is sunken into a mesmerizing state of non-input that makes the subconscious go completely wild, but leaves the rest of the organism as relaxed as three weeks of holidays in the middle of nowhere.
The sounds shine with clarity and crispness like the sun on freshly fallen snow on an arctic spring morning. I think it has also been said before, but I don’t shy away from moving it: where other drone artists stack layer upon layer and thereby produce more and more mush of noise and compression, Kneale builds a fantastic site of sound that stands tall and invincible like a medieval cathedral. Hey, Russell also talks about cathedrals in his text! Is there nothing left for me? Does he have to take up all the good metaphors or what? It would probably have been better if I had just copied his text in here, would have saved me a lot of work, too. I guess it is my fault because I rarely read liner notes, except on those old jazz records, where mostly they don’t make any sense at all, but do a lot of talking anyway.
One more try and this time I will keep it simple: this is big. “Gunpowder temple of heaven” is a musical piece of enormous size and stature. Almost gargantuan. And it moves like the Leviathan does in the endless depths of the ocean, with grace and might, though slowly and careful. Sometime later on a reverb of something or other marks a distant bass drum going slowly all six of seven seconds. Compared to a lot of minimal music and droning what seems left out a lot and what seemed to make all those many releases bloodless and without energy is just that: size filled with energy. This release seems like it is filled to the brim with sound that pulsates and reverberates, that stirs and lives and contains enough energy to make a village last through the winter. (www.monochrom.at/cracked/)
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