Birchville Cat Motel - Summer's Seething Pulse
(Mar/Ino)
Summer's Seething Pulse is New Zealander Campbell Kneale' s contribution to Mar/ino's Complication Series of releases. Packaged in a foil-stamped cardboard gatefold sleeve, the disc contains three tracks of Birchville Cat Motel's signature sound exploration in long form.
The disc begins with "Sleep June Slope," almost ten minutes of metallic static and grating, rough in character but somewhat subdued. The industrial din slowly crescendos over the course of the track, the short and long scrapes growing louder over the hidden backing of repetitive tones until, a deeper, thicker drone takes precedence and the track ends with a surprising and somewhat ill-advised track of stuttering beats that, aside from their subtle missteps, wouldn't be out of place backing a mundane hip hop song.
The second track, "Seven Paper Lanterns," begins immediately with the sound of two undulating waveforms moving in and out of synchronization. As these tones ebb and flow, the sound of quiet scratching crinkles underneath, interrupted occasionally by the jarring insertion of glass breaking. There's little change throughout the beginning of the track, though a thin film of static rises tot he front of the mix and lone, echoed beats sound from time to time. New drones of varying rate, pitch, and texture move in an out of the forefront of the track slowly, and the opening tones eventually disappear, leaving a starker soundscape of deeper resonance in their place. "Seven Paper Lantern," over the course of twenty-four minutes, manages not only to be totally listenable, but, in fact, the highlight of the disc.
The beginning of the disc's title track melds perfectly with the end of its predecessor, as low, oscillating drones are ornamented by sparse, sonorous guitar, notes strummed alone or in small clusters. Reverb-rich samples of field recordings arise from within, and the track slowly becomes thicker, resulting in a crowded mix of numerous drones before subsiding in a more subdued direction. Throughout it all, the original sounds of the synth tones and guitar remain constant, until, at the track's eighteen-minute conclusion, all of the sounds drop out gently.
Summer's Seething Pulse finds the normally meditative Birchville Cat Motel returning to what he knows, and even with such varied instrumentation as amplified wires and destroyed computer speakers, the album delves into more anonymous ground that might be expected or preferred. Kneale's penchant, however, for subtle beauty and dreaminess, shines through to make the album something more worthwhile than simply another permutation of the same old thing.
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