Birchville Cat Motel's music is deeply rooted in the New Zealand identity and landscape. The music is littered with recurring themes of isolation
and rich desolation, native plants and animals, and location specific instrumentation and titles.
Acroma presents #7 in an ongoing series of experimental music nights.
Birchville Cat Motel, Greg Malcolm, Adam Willetts. Sunday May 2nd
S.C.A.P.A.
74 Shortland St
6pm $5.00Birchville Cat Motel's music is deeply rooted in the New Zealand identity and landscape. The music is littered with recurring themes of isolation
and rich desolation, native plants and animals, and location specific instrumentation and titles.
Acroma presents #7 in an ongoing series of experimental music nights.
Birchville Cat Motel, Greg Malcolm, Adam Willetts. Sunday May 2nd
S.C.A.P.A.
74 Shortland St
6pm $5.00His most recent work seeks to discover (or recover) the inherent spirituality of suburban domesticity. To create new, and sacred, sound-icons for lawn mowing, hedge trimming, car-tinkering New Zealand.
In terms of its construction, Birchville Cat Motel embodies a collision between superficially disparate musical forms. Hijacking the spiritualised
improvisation of free jazz, the compositional grandeur of contemporary classicism, the 'democratic' drone-based format and ritualism of much ethnic and traditional folk music, the liberated new sonic freedoms of hip-hop and electro-acoustic, and the recalcitrant clout of 'hoon-rock' like Black
Sabbath, Kneale manages to create an intensely personal and visionary audio-universe that is decidedly dissimilar from any of the sums parts. A 'new' music without a name.
Guitarist Greg Malcolm's sound consists of hypnotic evolving melodies that are built upon layered drones (created by mini fans, e-bows and floor guitars). The melodies utilise a variety of tones and sounds created on his unique adapted electric guitar created by New Zealand Luthier Peter Stephens.
His compositions and improvisations are specifically designed to accentuate the beauty inherent in the innovations developed within this guitar. Other than the e-bow and fuzz box all sounds are created live and organically by string manipulation techniques.
Adam Willetts is an Auckland based artist who works in both improvised Music and installation. He performs with a variety of sound sources including guitar, contact microphones and there min, using game controllers to manipulate live sampling software.
Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel is one of the many reasons New Zealand's music scene is worshipped around the globe. The Motel draws from noise, drone and rock, settling somewhere between Alastair Galbraith and Motorhead (see photo). Kneale runs his own Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, which always feature exquisitely hand-crafted album art, and has released records on Corpus Hermeticum, Ecstatic Peace! and Drunken Fish, among others.
Birchville Cat Motel on dusted