Birchville Cat Motel - Beautiful Speck Triumph
(Last Visible Dog)
New Zealand's Campbell Kneale has been making music under the Birchville Cat Motel name for over seven years now. He has described Birchville Cat Motel's music as "Antarctic" which may be a nod to his homeland's proximity to the continent, but also serves to emphasize the scope, grandeur, and in some cases, the pace of his music. The music is also rooted in a concept of "place." BCM recordings always evoke a particular site either in title (Copenhagen, and Home both released on Kneale's own Celebrate Psi Phenomenon aka C/Psi/P label) or by integrating sounds from his domestic life into his work.
Several of Kneale's recordings have featured his sons' contributions (one of my favorite examples is the part of Creeping Frost Onset—;another C/Psi/P release—during which the Kneale family bang away on toy instruments, sort of like an Art Ensemble of Lower Hutt). On "Beautiful Speck Triumph," Kneale uses baby rattles and what sounds like a squeaking balloon as part of a dense sonic palette. Domestic sounds become exotic by placing them outside their usual (mundane) context.
Another trademark of Kneale's work is a thoughtful and deliberate use of layered sounds and Beautiful Speck Triumph may serve as a new high water mark. Sounds seem omnipresent, bleeding in and out, entering and exiting, in a constant swirl, often building to glorious crescendos and then gracefully bowing out. Even the mastering blends one track into another seamlessly; we are eavesdropping on the eternal sound.
As far as I know (details of the BCM discography are not always easy to obtain), Beautiful Speck Triumph is BCM's first commercially available double disc set which, given Kneale's predilection for long sound pieces, is actually a bit surprising. Newcomers may be wary of investing two hours in what some have unfairly pigeonholed as a "New Zealand Noise Artist," but this release embraces melody and lyricism to a degree that should dispel any doubts.
The first disc begins with "White Ground Elder," a low organ (?) drone, periodically overlaid with beeps and feedback squeals. Slowly, Kneale augments this base with a chaotic chorus of squawks, whinings, clatterings, and hovering tones. These ebb and are replaced by lulling, thrumming drones with a backdrop of feathery percussion and cicada-like chirps that depart one by one to leave only the crickets.
The coda of "White Ground Elder" is echoed by the harsher, mechanistic chirps that begin "Trembling Frost Spires." A mellifluous cacophony of bells chime in and are eventually themselves supplanted by more creaking, winding, modulated tones that flap against each other like birds disturbed on their perch. Finally, the "Birds" yield to minute clicks and scratches; a hazy afterimage of the earlier drones. Minimal violin bowing and organ swells join in and the track transitions into "Speck Fears."
...which is where this recording really gets interesting. Absolutely nothing in the near hour leading up to its fragile lyrical beauty prepares the listener for the simple blossoming melody of "Speck Fears." Once plaintive piano arpeggios join the violin and organ, the song proclaims its affinity with Brian Eno's early ambient works; not what any listener grown accustomed to the textures of the earlier tracks might be expecting. It is at once the most accessible piece on the disc and the most jarring given its juxtaposition; such a radical departure from all that came before.
Disc two begins with the brief (not even six minutes!) "It's More Fun to Compute." Not to be confused with the Kraftwerk song of the same name, this track follows an uneasy melodica tentatively feeling its way through a willowy fogbank of clarinet and blips. It is debatable whether this qualifies as fun, but it is a seamless transition from the first disc to the second.
BCM's recurring theme of the link between architecture and clothing (Kneale once likened the Home CDR to a comfortable sweater) continues with the "Romance of Certain Clothes." The track begins with the sound of creaking floorboards. To this eerie background, Kneale adds scratchy vinyl LPs, what sounds like a buzzing, stuttering baby monitor and overheard conversations. It is as if the piece were listening to the sounds around it during its recording and playing them back as part of its own history.
For all of the wonders already heard, the crowning achievement of "Beautiful Speck Triumph" is the title track, a slow burning ascension of soaring organ, howling guitars, and booming drums. Kneale's deft hand stretches a moment of ecstatic joy over twenty minutes. By the time the last echoes of the drums have faded into the distance, and birdsongs and a gently plucked guitar play out the rest of the track, it's hard to believe more than two hours have passed.
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