Spotlight: POWERS Whanganui Live Performance & Artist Talk

A titan of Aotearoa New Zealand's noisy underground for the entirety of the 21st century thus far, Campbell Kneale is known to adventurous listeners around the globe for his uncompromising works as Birchville Cat Motel, Black Boned Angel, Our Love Will Destroy the World and more. POWERS is his current project, a genre-obliterating sonic singularity "inspired by ’60s New York loft minimalism, ’70s Kosmische synth, ‘80s No Wave, ’90s Scandinavian black metal demos, and ’00s Japanoise", expressed across an ongoing series of immersive long-form releases via Kneale's own Sunset Temples imprint.

Having just wrapped up an extensive nationwide tour, the next destination for POWERS will be Whanganui's recently reopened Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery on 28th June. Kneale will treat River City dwellers to a live performance in the early evening at 6pm, alongside Australian sound practitioner / curator Joel Stern "performing pieces for Buchla synth and synthetic voices."

Kneale will also provide first-hand insights into his own practice (which also encompasses painting and carving) in a free artist talk titled 'How To Destroy Time And Space', offering attendees "a 'beginners guide' to some of his composition strategies and current fascinations" earlier that same day from 4pm. Listen to POWERS' ear-drilling and texturally transcendent new Eleventh Powers release, get amongst, and don't forget your earplugs...

POWERS
Sunday 28th June - Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui
4pm - Artist Talk (free)
6pm - Live Performance with Joel Stern

Press release:

POWERS is the current incarnation of CAMPBELL KNEALE who has ping-ponged about the nether regions of interstellar sound for close to thirty earth-years aboard sonic spacecraft such as BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL, BLACK BONED ANGEL, and OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD.

The Sarjeant Gallery is proud to present a free artist talk where Campbell will give attendees a 'beginners guide' to some of his composition strategies and current fascinations followed by a live performance. POWERS will also be joined by visiting Australian artist, curator, and thinker JOEL STERN performing pieces for Buchla synth and synthetic voices.

Known primarily as the captain of his own ship, CAMPBELL KNEALE has also collaborated and performed with some of outsider music’s most defiant and diverse experimentalists… Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Merzbow, Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O))), Keiji Haino, Borbetomagus, Phill Niblock, and Tony Conrad to name a few.

Whereas the vast majority of Kneales music revolves around the fastidious manipulation of the multitracking process, POWERS pounds on the thin cracking ice of an ‘everything-all-at once’ mindset, performing and recording his immersive blitzkrieg ragas entirely in the moment, walking the tightrope between triumph and humiliation, daring the ground beneath his feet to splinter and collapse in harmful fractals of fire and smoke. Inspired by ’60s New York loft minimalism, ’70s Kosmische synth, ‘80s No Wave, ’90s Scandinavian black metal demos, and ’00s Japanoise, POWERS pushes everything to transcendental, excoriating, and stroboscopic extremes. Impossibly dense, defiantly raw, and utterly hypnotic, POWERS sets the controls for the heart of a freezing black sun… unfurling the unfathomable with occultic, apocalyptic sound. Carnivorous psychedelia.

POWERS has found an outlet primarily through Kneale's own SUNSET TEMPLES imprint, releasing a baffling array of uniformed, numbered, sound-artifacts.