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Birchville Cat Motel

Interview: Ascension Band

Flashback to 2004 and an interview I conducted with Dave Edwarfs and Nigel Patterson of Ascension Band on the eve of their performance at the Wellington Fringe Festival.

#nzmusic #ascensionband #daveedwards

Celebrate Psi Phenomenon

Celebrate Psi Phenomenon is a drone, noise and experimental music-focused label from Upper Hutt’s Campbell Kneale, the prolific performer behind Birchville Cat Motel and Black Boned Angel. The label often utilises a distinctive wallpaper aesthetic to their cover designs.

The label was particularly prolific from the mid 1990s until around 2008.

#nzmusic #experimentalmusic #dronemusic #celebratepsiphenomenon

Root Don Lonie For Cash

Prolific cassette, CDr and lathe-cut label run by Clayton Noone (aka CJA) and utilised by a fair few New Zealand (and some overseas) artists since the mid 1990s. Their first few years of releases had distinctive spray-painted covers. The original Don Lonie was billed as ‘America’s No. 1 high-school assembly speaker’, who recorded several albums for popular Christian record labels in the early 1960s.

#nzmusic #undergroundmusic #rootdonlonieforcash

Airport

The very wayward guitar/electronics duo that eventually gave birth to Birchville Cat Motel.

Beguiling atonal plonkery and profound multi-stringed shingle slides by two irrepressible young guns utterly oblivious to the fact that most people wanted to stone them to death with spare change. I can’t believe we did this in public.

20City

Now defunct label run by Richard Francis – aka Eso Steel. 20City released a total of 4 albums and a handful of single-length releases before Francis re-established the sub-label CMR, distributing both through the Auckland-based Acroma mail-order website.

An experimental / noise label with releases from New Zealand, Japanese and American artists with Richard Francis central to most of the releases.

Bruce Russell

The man behind Xpressway, corpus hermeticum, and a significant part of the Dead C, Russell finally (after years of eclectic collaborations with a broad selection of New Zealand and international artists) released his solo album on his own Corpus Hermeticum label… Read More »Bruce Russell

Wings of Vengence

Experimental and fun grindcore/noisecore project from New Zealand, featuring Campbell James Kneale from Birchville Cat Motel and Black Boned Angel. Released on mini CDr by Battlecruiser, the more extreme music-related sublabel of Celebrate Psi Phenomenon (Campbell’s own label).

Ming

One of Campbell Kneale’s (Birchville Cat Motel) many sideprojects, who so far have released material of a long, winding and aggressive nature in short lathe-cut runs. Discography Versus The Great Satan Cd-R [2003 Carbond Records Cr83] Mauve Stars Cd-R [2004… Read More »Ming

Ben Spiers

Ben Spiers is a highly productive Wellington based experimental musician. He is a member of Campbell Kneale’s Celebrate Psi Phenomenon collective, half of the duo Seen Through with Antony Milton, a member of recording/performing outfits Empty Mirror and Kaosphere Orchestra,… Read More »Ben Spiers

Small Blue Torch

As I understand it, small blue torch is the duo of [Campbell] Kneale and Eso Steel‘s Richard Francis (though line-up changes in this scene are not uncommon). Both are among the finest of new zealand’s current sound artists. Offering an… Read More »Small Blue Torch

Birchville Cat Motel

Extremely prolific Wellington experimental sound-artist who also records his given name of Campbell Kneale, and as a founding member of such varied performance outfits as Lugosi, Hataitai Bowling Club, Black Boned Angel etc.

Kneale has been making music since the mid 90’s, accumulating a vast amount of (usually) limited edition CDr releases and building a name for himself overseas, were he receives a considerably higher profile (though due to the nature of his music – quite abstract, this popularity is limited to an appreciative cult following).

Keiran Monaghan

Kieran Monaghan Is One Of The Key Figures In The Wellingtons – If Not NZ’S – ‘Adventurous Music’ Scene. A Driving Force Behind NZ Punk During The 90s, He Currently Plays Cabaret ‘Chamber-Punk’ As Mr Sterile, Drums For Sunship And… Read More »Keiran Monaghan