Our Love Will Destroy the World is the new project of Campbell Kneale, previously of Birchville Cat Motel fame, runner of Celebrate Psi Phenomenon and probably the leading light of the Antipodean noise underground. Under that previous moniker Kneale released an inordinate number of discs over many a year, only a few of which I know well. In spite of normally being lumped among the droners, the variety of the Birchville Cat Motel releases stretched from gentle tonal drone to abrasive noise onslaught, occasionally even gifting us slabs of frenetic improvisation recorded from the room next door. So why the need for a new name? I would guess this is supposed to mark a venture into new territory, and though in some ways it does, it’s still not a million miles from his previous output.
The tape contains two single-track live shows, with no information as to where or when they were recorded, and nothing to tell the sides apart. The room-fidelity is palpable, but it does add a visceral gritty edge to the experience. Kneale’s playing is freer than I’ve heard it in a long while, it’s nigh on impossible to make out any recognisable instrumentation, though in my mind he is strangling a guitar with one pair of hands and working the knobs of a fx-pedal array with all ten toes. It took me a few listens to get into this tape, but the more it spins, the more it grows on me. Sonically it comes in extremely close to the more recent recordings of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof! outfit or possibly an Ashtray Navigations live set: shifting tectonic strata of skree, fuzz, wail and feedback all melded into a perpetual shower of blazing psychedlia. There’s also an LP out on Dekorder, which I might just have to pick up too, considering how well this is slipping down my cochlea.
Tape Drift
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