Birchville Cat Motel

New Zealand must surely have a higher number of drone rockers per capita than any other country in the world. The country’s Corpus Hermeticum imprint (curated by Bruce Russel of the Dead C) practically captured the market of freeform drone before it closed its doors in 2004. Under his Birchville Cat Motel guise, Wellington resident Campbell Kneale — just one of the many artists to grace the HCorp catalogue — hasn’t relented. Quite possibly the most prolific of today’s NZ form destroyers, Kneale continues to unleash a merciless stream of shell-shocked scree. On Seventh Ruined Hex, UK noise maven Matthew Bower (he of Sunroof! and Skullflower fame) joins in the fray, offering up a fair amount of guitar-based clamour to rub elbows with Kneale’s faulty electrons. Bower adds a frantic touch to the usually slow-building BCM sound constructions. The resulting album is a requisite listen for those who need all the good vibes thrust from their minds.