BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL

With maples ablaze

CD, Scarcelight

On this collection of ten unnamed tracks Birchville Cat Motel goes a step further than it has dared so far, by inviting a big number of underground sound-artists from all around the world to contribute and then sculpturing a unified piece of art from the there. And it works. “with maples ablaze” will take you on an exciting, challenging but also soothing ride, that has jumps and loopings, but also longwinded parts where you can relax and watch the landscape drift by.  Staying off from any extremism or genre-attributed music, BCM manages to stray between the definite points in the musical landscape and find a more interesting path on its own. “Only he who walks his own way, can’t be overtaken” I read yesterday in an ad. As if it was all about being the fastest. I’d say, he who has reached timelessness is freed of all sorrows and sadness.

This one has been around for some time now and judging the usual foray of work-progress that Birchville Cat Motel is known for, I guess there’ll be some more records available by know. 2004 saw a handful of releases and also something of a “hype”, albeit on a very minor scale, for BCM. Well, it takes some time to really get to the core of things like these at times. Moreover, on the one hand, this is not the Wire or any other publication dedicated to covering the most recent affairs and releases (that would be music journalism and god behold we ever become music journalists…). On the other hand, “with maples ablaze” is a little different than the other releases by BCM, because on this one Campbell Kneale has invited about two or three dozen likeminded souls to contribute to his music. This includes John Wiese (Bastard Noise, Helicopter Records), Reynols, Bruce Russell, Tetuzi Akiyama, Peter Wright, and lots and lots of others. Mostly from New Zeeland, where Kneale hails from, but also from all over the world. Actually, this should be called the Birchville Cat Motel Orchestra, to be honest. And finally, after some years of following musical trends, you should have wisened up and realised that there is no necessity to know things first or know everything there is. Don’t let them fool you.

Thinking of New Zeeland, don’t you get the impression of green woods, cool but refreshing air, cuddly animals (like the Kiwi-bird) and friendly people? Usually people forget that the downunder end of the globe hosts the most deadly and venomous spiders and snakes around. Insects as big as seven inch singles that can jump into your face and bite of your skin with one single leap from two meters away. Snakes who will kill a whole village by biting one person, so deadly they are. Well, this two-sided approach to Kiwi-island is way too simplicistic to give truth to the matter (and I wonder what New Zeelanders will think of mid-european nations that live on Mozart and skiing alone). Because New Zeeland has been known worldwide for its wide-ranging underground/rock-music-scene. Is BCM a part of that? I guess so, though it’ll definitely inhabit the outmost fringes of that scene.

As soft guitars and chirping noises soothe the ears, harsh sounds will invade and blow like a cold wind in a summer evening. Somewhere along these ten unnamed tracks of differing length (why the distinctions, they all run into one another anyway) some metal cans will clank and crank with deep echo, some ambient will emerge, some frenzy and chaotic whirlwinds of noise will wipe through your aural space, then some more noise supported with some more rhytms, vocal samples. At times it is hard to judge where all of this will lead to. Especially during the longwinded excursions as in track #4, one that makes me shudder with cold walking up my spine, but that evolves into a finely crafted piece of chamber-noise after six minutes running time and falls into a sea of washing noise towards the end. Or the chaotic, dark ambient and weird noise of track #6, with its warbled children’s (?) singing and mad sounds. This one is another 10-minute excursion into parts of the mind you never wished you visited. And some time after its all back to lying in the sunlight by a small river, listening to the water splashing by peacefully and the lulling hum of a nearby highway.

To be honest, all tracks on here are finely crafted. It is remarkable how, disregarding the diverse sources and artists who provided the original material, every track on “with maples ablaze” sounds so solid and fitting into a bigger confinement. Nothing seems arbitrary or fallen into place by accident. Nevertheless we go from Pita to the Dead Husbands to Black Dice and back to Psychon within a cool hour plus a few minutes. The slow, “monotone” drones emerging from almost nowhere at times should be mentioned as well, e.g. in track number nine, where a gentle humming sound sets stage for some roadside work in the background and a screeching guitar in the other background. In the end of that we get back to the birdsong and the sunlight. In comparison the sawing, gnawing single-frequency pitch of track number seven (or was that eight?) is a lot harder to stomach, because it sounds absolutely like someone drilling a hole in your forehad. But all in all “with maples ablaze” is a comforting collection of aural architectures. Of course, any record to be really good has to be challenging at times, forcing the listener to really listen to it. And so it is.

www.scarcelight.org 

02/2005