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BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL  Birds Call Home Their Dead  CD   (Celebrate Psi Phenomena)   23.98
Birds Call Home Their Dead IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Another new full length from New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel, released simultaneously with that killer Bird Sister Blasphemy disc, the first

ever BCM entry into mastermind Campbell Kneale's avant-noise-metal sublabel Battlecruiser. These two releases compliment each other, but where the sister

disc Bird Sister Blasphemy takes Birchville Cat Motel's transcendant drone rock and runs 20,000 volts of black electricity into the tracks, turning

his hypnotic, repetitious riff constructs into redlining blasts of metallic feedback violence, this album came out on Kneale's primary label Celebrate Psi

Phenomena and showcases the cosmic, krauty, but no less heavy, side of Birchville Cat Motel. The disc opens with a monolithic slab of cosmic drone rock with

the nearly half-hour title track, starting off with sheets of quietly shimmering and swelling keyboards, changing ever so slowly as little electronic organ

sounds begin to appear and vibrate aloingside deep, growling guitar drones...after a couple of minutes, a drum beat begins to appear, way off in the distance

at first but consistently becoming louder and closer, a shuffling, offtime motorik beat pulsing in the swirling cloud of drone. The keyboard melody sounds

like the keys from The Who's "Baba O'Reilley" run through a bank of effects, chopped up and spinning through the cosmos while BCM's squalls of free-flying

electronics and pounding ur-riffage explodes into a heavily distorted blast of celestial crunch; all the while, that unchanging drumbeat pounds away in the

back incessantly throughout the track, turning this into a monstrous cosmic noise-rock drone jam, equal parts Skullflower and Circle and Hawkwind before it

disintegrates into the blissed out storm of psychedelic high-end skree, chirping bird songs, lush low-end amplifier feedback, and swirls of buzzing,

whooshing FX. If you liked BCM's Screamformelongbeach, this has that same kind of brutal, propulsive power. Massive.

The second track is "Kissing Dragon", and is a comparitively brief piece of shimmery reverential feedback and raga-esque drones that becomes entertwined

with a beautiful, vaguely Occidental melody. A beautiful drone interlude offsetting the hugeness of the other two tracks.

And then the third track appears, "Her Anger Is Limitless", which is another nearly half hour jam and which had originally appeared as a super limited tour

CD-R. This one is as huge and enveloping as the first, but the waves of sound are completely amorphous here, a constantly shifting pool of processed vocal

sounds and heavy flickering beams of feedback, what sound like heavy droning guitars being played back on malfunctioning tape heads, their buzzing growl

slurred and melting, and then all of a sudden the song EXPLODES four minutes in and reveals itself as a mighty metallic shoegazer dirge, like

Loveless but way heavier, Skullflower meets My Bloody Valentine, woozy guitars and grinding bassline and pounding subterranean rhythm heard as a low

rumble beneath the bludgeoning blissful white-hot noise. WOW. Simply amazing. You shouldn't even have to think twice about picking this album up if you're a

Birchville fan. The guy never disappoints us. Limited edition as usual, and it comes in an awesome huge 8-panel gatefold digipack, with those cool

wallpaper swirls that have branded the Celebrate Psi Phenomena releases for years spread out across the outside of the case, but the inside features some

really pretty photographs along with minimal liner notes, the disc itself attached to the case by a foam hub in the center of one of the panels.