Birchville Cat Motel Rym
Birchville Cat Motel's wiki: Birchville Cat Motel is a one-man experimental music project formed by Campbell Kneale from Wellington, New Zealand. Although largely unrecognised by the mainstream press and public 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.
Birchville Cat Motel interviewBIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Interview by Matt Silcock (March 2000)Even people who have heard 'drone' and 'freenoise' music upside down are still missing something if they haven't heard New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel. There's something both timeless and very new about the masses of controlled and overdubbed noise laid down by this unit; it's loud and glorious and it somehow seems to actually have a physical glow when it's coming out of stereo speakers, like the atmosphere of 1972 vintage space rock, the sludge-of-the-earth amptones of Black Sabbath, and the endless buzzing hum of The Theater of Eternal Music all rolled into one. Based in Wellington, the scenic and cosmopolitan capital city of New Zealand, Birchville Cat Motel is for most intents and purposes one Campbell Kneale, a friendly and approachable family man with a demeanor as lovely as his noise. There's a lot going on in the BCM universe right now; I conducted an interview with him via e-mail that touched on these things, as well as his working methods, what makes him a punk rocker, and of course, how great Slayer is.PSF: Describe your 'coming of age' as a New Zealand musician.
Any notableinspirations or events along the way?BCM: Coming of age? Haha, you make it sound like this interview is beingconducted 'poolside' from my Tokelauan beach residence. My coming of agecould be described as 'unglamourous'. This is NZ buddy, a little middleclass, Presbytarian island in the middle of a shark infestedocean. Very few people know (or care) about Birchville Cat Motel.
I endup with the same 20 people at most of my gigs and only a few months agothe local arts magazine billed me as a visiting U.S guitarist! Oh yes-my rise to meteoric uberstardom has been filled with many suchhighlights.However, the 'aging process' of Birchville has been tremendouslyliberating and satisfying in that I have full control over all my music.I record what I want, when I want, for who I want. I've connected upwith some wonderful people, bands and labels who are very enthusiasticabout what I do and made some great friends in some pretty far flungplaces. I guess this makes me feel like I am 'successful'- not in thetraditional sense of having my photo taken regularly at parties withcomplete strangers who just 'looooove my muuuusic.' But in the sensethat I have the artistic liberty to be who I am.
I am above the system.Punk rock, baby.To speak of events that have shaped what I do is to speak in non-musicalterms. I am less inspired by music than other stuff. I have always beenfascinated with how location affects what ends up on the 8-track. Unit testing completablefuture. TheInsample CD was recorded in Dunedin- it was snowing, grey, and miserablefor pretty much the whole time I spent recording it.
I was working as avideo editor at the time at a local TV studio and lived in a perpetualblackout- something of an Icelandic experience. The Drunken Fish CD bycontrast, was recorded in a pastel pink, spare bedroom in suburbanWellington (and I had just started work as a florist!)- the resultingmusic was about as radically different as my surroundings but no less arefining of my own vision. The upcoming Ecstatic Peace LP will no doubtreveal more secrets about where I have lived, as it was recorded in asmall house that overlooked some of the oldest parts of Wellington-wonderful,ramshackle, hillbilly houses and masses of ancient greentrees.
The only musical event that I could call significant for me wasbeing asked to play with Bruce Russell, Roy Montgomery, Kim Pieters,Peter Stapleton etc. Early last year.
This was really the first time Iactually BELIEVED that anybody had heard my music and taken any noticeof it. I can tell you, I had terrible trouble deciding what to wear thatnight!PSF: Was this sharing a bill or some sort of one-shot 'supergroup'?
If thelatter, are there recordings?BCM: Sort of. Darren Mock (Mr Drunken Fish) was making a visit to our fairshores and was planning a gig with Roy Montogomery in Christchurch. Hewas real keen to meet up with me and so I got on the bill for the night-Birchville Cat Motel, Roy Montgomery & Darren Mock,Pieters/Russell/Stapleton. After all of our respective performancestheir was a quick rendition of 'War Pigs' with me and Darren, Roy, andsome guy playing the bass (whose name slips my mind). The recordings arein my shed.In terms of musical inspiration, Birchville is something of a high speedcollision between high-brow and low-brow musics. I dig Slayer and PhillNiblock, AC/DC and Radelescu.
Not surprisingly, Birchville is probablysome sort of Yves St Laurant wearing, latte drinking, bogan band.Black Flag plays Music For Airports.PSF: Actually, just earlier tonight a friend I were talking about how amazing Slayer was, and how we don't mosh or otherwise bounce off walls when we listen to albums like Reign in Blood and South of Heaven; we sit back motionless in a comfy chair and let the music wash over us, an immersion experience much like Phil Niblock.BCM: I couldn't agree more. An entire Slayer album could quite rightly beconfused with a drone experience- a classic example ofmusical-info-overload to the point where WHAT they are playing becomesslightly irrelevant and the FEROCITY at which they play whatever theyARE playing becomes more important. And besides, the concept of'air-guitar' becomes hopelessly redundant in the face of that kind ofbpm- very good for air-drums though. Um, so I hear.In my house Reign in Blood performs the vital function of providing mewith a great deal of impetus to perform mundane domestic chores- Slayerhas this wonderful hidden talent of being able to halve the perceivedamount of dishes that are mounting up around the sink.
I also find thatNapalm Death's Peel Sessions makes my cakes rise a little better and they aregenerally moister. For real jumping about music, Birchville uses andendorses The Cult's Electric, The Lime Spiders' The Caves Comes Alive,and Teengenerate's Smash Hits.PSF: How did you make the transition into drone/freenoise/outside music?BCM: The 'transition' into noise was only a public transition. I alwaysplayed noise, feedback etc at home I just never thought anybody elsewould want to hear it until quite recently. I played my 'real music'stuff publicly- moving over the period of about 10 years playing in afew full throttle guitar-pop combos (largely inspired by Sabbath, MyBloody Valentine, Husker Du etc) until I finally ended up ditching allthe fiddly bits and playing what was left.
Noisy-feedback sludge(which was becoming a large part of the music I was doing anyway). Thislatest transition happened to co-incide with seeing some interesting NZbands that were new to me at the time like Handful of Dust, Gate, Thela,Dead C, Surface of the Earth etc. I was quite dumbfounded to discoverthat these folks were doing publicly what I had been doing privately foryears. It took a long time for my private and public activities to catchup with each other. I feel like I am now playing at my most honest andtransparent (ironically, the very qualities I was striving for in my.er.
'singer-songwriter' era).I guess if you had to put my records in a shop you would have to file itunder noise, or freenoise, or drone. But I don't think the musicreally sits too well with any of these- it's too musical for 'noise'(that is to say, its not like Cock ESP or nothin'), too conceptualizedand overdubbed for 'freenoise,' and too grating for 'drone' (not tomention the fact that it is not inspired by Spacemen 3 in the slightest,haha). Mind you, I've never been into a shop where they have an'Antarctic' section. Have you?PSF: No, but if there was one I would probably browse it.Is Birchville Cat Motel always a solo project?BCM: Well, no. The 'studio' (ahem) recordings are always solo but when I playlive, a rare occurrence that has only happened reasonably recently, Iusually form a 'band' for the evening.
I guess this is the closest Iget to real FREENOISE as defined in Bruce Russell's little rule book,hahahaha. I did do a few gigs 'solo/multi-instrumental' style but I gotsick of lugging an entire bands gear around all by myself.
I have a'pool' of people who I trust musically and I pick and choose from themaccording to what approach or vision I have for the performance and alsoto ensure that each performance is completely different from the last.Its still a bit of a solo project still though because I try to give theothers a bit of an idea of what I'm aiming at- it's not just a free jam oranything.PSF: What's the story behind the name or is that a secret part of the 'mystique'?BCM: No no, I'm happy to dispel the myth. Well, Birchville is alittle semi-rural suburb way the hell out the sticks in Wellington. Oneof those crazy little Edward Scissorhands suburbs where all the houseslook like they were inspired by a 'fashion don't' page from a 1970'smagazine. To get to Birchville all you have to do is drive about threequarters of an hour north of the city on the main road and you'll cometo an AA sign that says BIRCHVILLE and underneath it there's anothersign that says CAT MOTEL. I drove past it one day and it kinda stuck. Iwent out there and took photos of the sign and they appeared on thecover of the White Alpha Matte lathe cut 7' (and most recently inPopwatch too!).The naming of my project was fairly typical of the way I name things.Most of the titling of pieces are derived from found text- a few wordsstrung together innocently in a novel or on a billboard taken out ofcontext- or word association. I've realized that over time recurringsymbols have attached themselves to the music through the titles-animals, heaven, angels, metal, desolate locations, flora, the fourelements, numbers.
Maybe you can tell me what all this means.PSF: You've touched on this-luv the bit about the influence of differentlocations-but can you describe your working methods? Is there anyconsistency? Do you find that you have to record a lot of material and thenedit down for release? Or do just wait to record until you're 'feeling it,'so to speak?BCM: Working methods.
Hmmm.Well I have a little shed and I sneak out there secretly after thefamily has gone to bed and raise all hell. I usually just plonk arounduntil I find a sound or a tone that rings my bell and then I set the8-track a-spinning. Lay down a track of unfixed duration and then go backand build on that with an unfixed number of complimentary tracks.
I havebeen through a number of phases regarding these 'complimetary tracks'-intially each track would contain a completely different sound or tone(perhaps to sound like a live band? Hindsight conjecture), then I wentthrough my phase where I would do three or four tracks of the same toneand then an additional three or four of similar tones (ala SiberianEarth Curve) which resulted in something of a hallucigenic blur, andthen I tried two tracks of the same tone plus one or two 'textural'elements (which seemed to put a little more blood into the drones).Lately I seem to have made a return to the different tones idea for noreal reason other than fancy.Consistency is a hard thing for me to maintain. I am married to awonderful woman and I have two gorgeous kids which means the onlyconsistency I can claim is that my recording time often gets zeroed.
Irecord whenever I can. I am a big fan of ritual as a part of thecreative process- all Birchville recordings are steeped in pipe tobacco(even though I don't smoke), incense (even though I'm not a hippyfruitcake) and coffee. 'Aroma' is right up there with 'location' for me.I very very rarely edit down material- what you hear on the records,with the exception of a few fade-ups and fade-downs, is what happened onthe night. Not that I have any objection to editing stuff, I just don'tdo it. Even with the live recordings such as the Betley WCD LP and the'Blankagelspace' CDR, I prefer to release a good performance in itsentirety rather than an excerpt.
I think many of the performances demandthe timespan of the whole thing to gain some of their power.PSF: Do neighbors ever walk by and wonder what that strange humming sound coming from that shed is?BCM: Well no actually. See I very seldom play out loud- I line everythingstraight into the desk and I usually monitor it through headphones.Quite recently I scored a lovely set of speakers that I hooked up to thedesk and I now use those quite a bit but certainly not at 'neighbourvolume'.
I'm actually a pretty shy when I'm recording. I really feelvery agitated if I think there's anyone listening to what I'm doing- Ijust can't play if I know people are around.PSF: That's surprising-when I listen to Birchville I get the sense that it'sbeing played very LOUD. And I always assumed you must have some reallygreat amplifiers. But you bypass amps completely?BCM: Oh nonononono. Dont get me wrong, I ain't no wuss.
They are recordedat exceeding loud volume but they just aren't running through thespeakers. I've got some real monster-amps, real big muthas and I usethem to help generate the sound and volume necessary but I line out theback instead of close mic-ing it off the speaker.
I doubt I could standto be in the same room as an amp playing as loud as I have it running ifthe speakers were plugged in. The Insample CD was recorded at an uttergorgonizing volume while my wife and son slept peacefully in the nextroom.PSF: I ain't no gearhead, and this ain't Guitar Player magazine, but may I askwhat brand of real big muthas you play through?BCM: Sure you ain't no gearhead! Fender Super Twin (affectionately known asthe Fen-Darth) 6X 6L6s, 395watts max output power- big enough to heat amodest house, and a whopping old NZ made GUNN.Actually, most of the Ecstatic Peace LP was recorded on a ROSS 10wpractice amp.PSF: How did the Siberian Earth Curve album on Drunken Fish come about? How were you 'discovered' by America?BCM: Discovered by America!
That's really good, Matt. Guffaw.Well, a remarkable coincidence involving many disparate cosmic forces.At the time Simon Baker from Insample was about to release the debut's/t' CD, I had been conversing for a wee while with my OTHER two fans-'Joe Bloggs' and 'Ralph Haxton' (who ran the Gyttja label), whointroduced me to their groop, rhBand who were already releasing stuffthrough Drunken Fish.
I had been thinking about who I should write toabout releasing my next album and I made this huge list starting withthe impossible, out of reach, andnever-going-to-happen-in-a-million-years labels ranging all the way downto Celebrate Psi Phenomenon! Drunken Fish was TOP of the list.
Myfavourite label. Darren Mock at Drunken Fish took some copies of theInsample CD from Simon when it came out and one day I got all brave,emailed him out of the blue, and asked if he would be keen to hear ademo of the second Birchville album. To my utter amazement he a)replied, and b) said that he'd be dead keen to hear the demo. About ayear later, out popped a CD called Siberian Earth Curve on my dreamlabel! I was so happy I nearly cried.A similar story can be told about the Ecstatic Peace LP and the BetleyLP.
I just bowled up and asked one day. I have always sensed thepresence of 'God' around my releases. Sounds kooky, I know, but eventhough I'm not sure exactly what I think about God, I am convinced thatthe 'big picture' has reordered itself to accommodate me as I havetaken outrageous risks towards achieving my dreams. I have owned thefact that I am a creative person, and that I should abandon all themuso-baggage and anything else that detracts from the creativity in themusic itself. As I have done this, I have sensed that I am doing what Iwas created to do, and begun to become the person God would want me tobe. So, call me a fruitcake- up ya bum, I don't care. I'm very happymaking music in my shed and don't think I would ever swap it for theglamourous, 'tour all over the globe supporting Shellac' approach tomusic.PSF: Here's three more-or-less related things for you to discuss: 1.
Beautiful Speck Triumph
Your veryown label, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2. Your musical projects besidesBirchville Cat Motel, of which there seem to be many, and 3.
The releases,BCM/CpsiP and otherwise, which you feel are most exemplary.BCM: Celebrate Psi Phenomenon was set up to release primarily my own stuff,Birchville or otherwise. At the time I was still finding it hard tobelieve that Insample was going to release BCM on CD and I thought thatthe likelihood of anybody wanting to formally release any of the otherthings I was doing was bordering on pure fantasy. I was hanging aroundfolks like Clayton Noone (from Armpit), Stefan Neville (from Pumice),and Glen Frenzy and they all had their own little cassette labels.
I wasvery much inspired by them and decided to put together a catalogue of myrecordings too. Cassettes on a dub-to-order basis and lathe cuts ineditions of 20 became the order of the day. I found it hard to get ridof 20, they'd sit around in my room for months. However, by the timeSiberian Earth Curve came out I was spending a considerable amount ofmy life dubbing stuff for people and about 6 months ago it becameintolerable. As of January 2000, I ditched all the previous cassettesand began again with CDR- very limited editions of 50, and 8' lathe cutpicture discs also in editions of 50. This was purely in order to cutdown on the amount of work that I was having to put in to not disappointpeople. It works much better now too.
Less grindwork, more time torecord, easier to get rid of the stuff. I think its turned into a goodlittle label.Yeah, I have a number of ideas that don't fit into Birchville Cat Motel'sworldview. I have always had a live counterpart band that accompaniedBirchville which acted as a kind balance seeing as Birchville neverplayed live until quite recently. Initially this started with SmallBlue Torch (featuring Richard Francis who went on to become the totallymarvellous Eso Steel). We would get together on Sunday afternoons,demolish equipment, record live-in-the-living room and release the oddthing. When I shifted from Dunedin to Wellington I formed Lugosi whichis a much more controlled drone thing- very sedate and beautiful and notat all like the driving guitar fisticuffs of SBT. Hataitai Bowling Clubformed in tandem to Lugosi with Glen Frenzy from Willis and a rathermysterious guy called Darren who played in a reclusivehard-techno-noise-collage project called AC Death.
HBC was more alongthe lines of pistake-electronica-noise-bufoonery which resulted in somereally staggering recordings. Unlike Lugosi, we actually played live infront of a few people at odd occassions. Other than that I have felt theneed to invent different studio bands to cater for different ideas- Ihave Atarisuperpredator which is mypisstake-but-very-fucking-serious-grindcore band, 010010 which is a nowdeceased pistake-dub-electro-acoustic outfit, Fonzie Osbourne- a BlackSabbath inspired, second rate, 'Las Vegas' band, there are many. Allthese projects are to provide an avenue to do other music apart fromBirchville- to stop me from becoming a singluarly focussed, boring guyreally.Well, there weren't many releases on C/Psi/P that I wasn't very attachedto for one reason or another. Personal faves would have to be the splitand collaboration lathe cuts with Neil Campbell, rhBand, and John Olson.They are all very different and it was an honour to work with some ofthe musicians that I admired most.I'm really happy with the current CDR releases too. Because I'mconciously doing less of them, I'm restricting myself with what I willand won't release- only the BEST is coming out.
I have new stuff comingout by my 'new-big-thing-around-here' bands Yermo and MCMS (USA), Pimmon(Australia), as well as collabs and splits on lathe cut picture discwith Ashtray Navigations, MSBR, and Thurston Moore- again, all artiststhat I greatly admire.PSF: When can we expect the Ecstatic Peaceand Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers releases? Any other notable futureplans?BCM: You can expect Lion of Eight Thousand Generations LP out on BetleyWelcomes Careful Drivers YESTERDAY- Its out and has been completely soldout to distributors- possible repressing on the way. And I just got thetest pressings from Thurston this week for Cranes Are Sleeping (andits beautiful) so that shouldn't be far off either. A little furtherdown the track, I have an 'acoustic' LP coming out on Minneapolis label,Freedom From.
(which is REALLY going to be something!), a 3 way splitCD out on Tokyo based 20City, and a possible split LP on a brand newBelgian label.