BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL - Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven

Campbell Kneale is among the greatest drone masters out there. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Now, under the name Birchville Cat Motel – not even counting the offshoots Black Boned Angel, Lugosi, Ohm and With Throats As Fine As Needles – good old Campbell churns out a flood of releases every year, between official albums, CD-Rs and various collaborations. Got that? It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to keep track of his output, but… but this "Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven" struck me from the very start.

I don't know, maybe it was the particularly austere cover, or perhaps I was intrigued by the label that handled the release, namely Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk.

Either way, "Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven" is the Birchville Cat Motel album that perhaps few would have expected. Let's be clear, there's nothing revolutionary or particularly alien compared to the usual, but here the New Zealand genius abandons his noise-oriented approach and starts working on the transcendental side of drone. Because even in the most rarefied situations – I'm thinking of "Siberian Earth Curve" or "We Count These Prayers" – the sound of Birchville Cat Motel was fired straight in the face, and was also characterized by a distinctly marked metallic timbre.

"Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven" is, instead, gentleness made into noise. A multilayered interlocking of ecstatic drones, looping without any break in continuity. So after a calm beginning, the different sonic layers set themselves in motion, gradually increasing in intensity, breaking apart and being progressively reborn.

You might almost think of it as a throwback to old-school minimalism, or a canon of repetitive music. Or perhaps, better still, we could venture to call it Birchville Cat Motel meets William Basinski. That's down to the perceptual shift induced by the reiteration of the interlocking layers, the continuous collapsing of individual elements, and the "emotional" quality of the whole mixture.

Then, when the sound fades into oblivion, you'd wish it could be reborn to new life, because this is music capable of making angels weep.

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23/02/2008