Pelt were formed by guitarists Mike Gangloff and Skip James Connell in 1993 in
Richmond (Virginia). With Pat Best and Jack Rose (Uglyhead's rhythm section),
the quartet recorded the single
Hugeness/ Frequency=Distribution (Radioactive Rat, 1994)
and the limited-edition double album
Brown Cyclopedia (Radioactive Rat, 1995 - VHF, 1997).
The album is
a cross between Royal Trux's Twin Infinitive
and Sonic Youth's
Daydream Nation, except with much more studio gimmickry.
After the introduction of Anchored,
inspired by Velvet Underground's mind-warping raga,
the atmosphere gets wildly psychedelic with the 10-minute aberration
Green Flower, a free-form piece that runs the gamut from
shamanic chant to wall of distortion.
Poor recording and amateurish vocals detract from a concept
More cacophonous dadaism of the John Cage/Edgar Varese school
(Subversion Of A Cat's Eye, 4th In Paradise)
and experimental pieces
a` la Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd (Phantom Tick)
the album dives into the 10-minute middle-eastern mass Absolution,
torn apart by delirious tape manipulation and orgies of guitar dissonance.
Almighty continues the religious theme with another shamanic invocation
accompanied by loud strumming.
The obscure clouds of the 9-minute Who Is The Third crown this
monumental tribute to the altered states of the mind.
Unlike other pursuers of the lysergic gospel, Pelt rarely sacrifice chaos
for the sake of melody (Total Denigration is the only "acid ballad").
They stick to noise as the medium and as the end. Each track eventually
loses its identity and leaves only sonic debris behind.
The album is played with virtually no percussions: guitars are more than enough
to raise this kind of hell.
Burning/Filament/Rockets (Econogold, 1996)
expanded the format to free-form instrumentals that recall
Bitch Magnet and Slint without
the rhythmic complexity.
Ein Platz An Der Sonne
sounds like an explicit homage to Einsturzende Neubaten.
The quartet's ambitions led to the seven lengthy improvisations/meditations of
Max Meadows (VHF, 1997). Bordering on
raga-rock's suites (Samsara),
acid-rock's jams (Sunken),
industrial noise (Abcdelancey),
hypnotic tribal folk (Hippy War Machine),
and droning new age music (Outside Listening),
Pelt's instrumentals merged mind-bending psychedelic distortions and
mind-opening world instrumentation;
Faust and Bardo Pond, Red Krayola and
Roy Montgomery,
Third Ear Band and Dead C,
but also Cecil Taylor and Tony Conrad.
Snake to Snake (Klang Industries) was recorded live in 1995 and 1996.
Excesses of minimalism and free-jazz feed the
three epic tracks of Techeod (VHF, 1998).
The 14-minute New Delhi Blues opens with a rhythm-less invocation by keyboards tuned like horns. After five minutes, tablas impose order on the chaotic
wailing of the instruments. At nine minutes, the tablas stop and music slowly
dissolves.
The 27-minute juggernaut Big Walker Mountain starts from this shapeless
vortex of unformed sounds and unfolds a massive attack of drones. When they
fade out, the primal chaos is restored. Then, again, the cacophony increases,
and then, again, it collapses. The dissonance gets louder and harsher, but
the piece ends on a surprisingly gentle note.
The 17-minute Mu Mesons is the most dissonant and droning of the three,
a gigantic cosmic radiation that builds up to a terrifying climax.
All in all, the longer piece is the disappointing one. The other two are
intriguing experiments in bridging psychedelic music, jazz music and
electronic music.
Multi-instrumentalist Rose has become the center
of gravity and Mike Gangloff's alter ego (Amy Shea on fiddle).
Jack Rose also recorded Via St Louis (Drunken Fish, 1998)
with Charalambides' Jason Bill.
Empty Bell Ringing In The Sky (VHF, 1999) could be the most overly
psychedelic of their works, or at least the most mind-bending and disjointed.
The 10-minute Ghosts Are Never Forgiven is an abstract atonal
chamber music piece.
The 18-minute Ghost Galaxies is even better in the realm of free-form
soundpainting: it is just a chamber concerto for guitar tones and percussion
that evokes both the Western avantgarde of the 20th century and the
rituals of East Asia.
The title track's sprawling 50-minute performance begins in a more organic
mode but soon becomes a chaotic accumulation of cryptic tones despite an
underlying bass ticking that can be viewed as a lugubrious melody.
The sound is dense, droning, vibrating and relentless. Incantations emerge
and drown. The guitar noise becomes more unnerving, bordering on industrial clangor, on a trumpeting elephant, on droning religious music, on galactic radio
signals.
This is at the same time Pelt's equivalent to Grateful Dead's Dead Star, a bold exploration of a psychic jungle, and Pelt's equivalent to
Throbbing Gristle's Music from the Death Factory.
The last 17 minutes constitute a separate coda that begins with an intense
droning raga alap and then builds around it enough noisy detours to create
a tragic atmosphere. The pattern seems to disintegrate into deadly shards
that then return like boomerangs to increase the level of dissonance.
One of the band members later reworked the pieces for a better-produced version,
Rob's Choice (VHF).
After this album Pelt became de facto Jack Rose's personal project.
On their two-disc tour de force Ayahuasca (VHF, 2001),
dedicated to the late
John Fahey,
Pelt is pushing the envelope of their post-psychedelic and post-ambient
technique. The mission of
bridging
John Fahey,
Grateful Dead,
Ravi Shankar and
LaMonte Young is
ambitious but also rewarding.
The 16-minute raga that opens the album, True Vine, is a slow-motion
parade of Tibetan drones, industrial dissonance, cavernous ringing performed
on sawing bowed guitar and exotic instruments. Free-form phrases float
chased by melodic fragments and piercing drones, emancipated from tempos and
structure. The general tone is more hallucinated than ecstatic.
Harsher droning sounds, spread over a vast spectrum of frequencies,
demolish any pretense of meditation/contemplation along the
26-minute musical calvary of Deer Head Apparition.
The wall of sound vibrates like a volcano that is about to erupt
and roars menacing like a Gordon Mumma piece.
We are almost in Dead C territory.
Bear Head Apparition is gentler and sparser, but also quite radical
cacophony.
The Dream Of Leaping Sharks (21 minutes) is the most oneiric piece,
steeped in deep tones, high-pitched sitar-like wails, and distorted snippets
of melodies.
The core of the album, the tour de force withing the tour de force, is the
three-part A Raga Called John.
The 12-minute long first part overlaps dreamy picking a` la
John Fahey
over a steady crackling guitar noise. The rhythm accelerates into a sort
of square dance, but then dies out and what remains is a shower of galactic
drones.
The 25-minute second part is an effervescent cacophony that creates a thick
texture of Buddhist and raga themes. It is probably the most intense and
radical piece on the album.
The brief third part returns to the quiet, atmospheric picking of the
first part, albeit wrapped in sitar-like drones.
Surprisingly, the album also includes two traditional Appalachian songs
(The Cuckoo and Deep Sunny South) that are given a noble
treatment without sacrificing too much of the original.
They display the amazing finger-picking of Jack Rose, a guitar virtuoso
for the new century.
Keyhole (Eclipse, 2001) contains improvisations by Pelt, Keenan Lawler
and Eric Clark performed in an empty grain silo.
Pearls From The River (VHF, 2003), Pelt's first truly "studio" recording
(not a single note was recorded live), contains three long instrumental acoustic tracks.
The droning minimalism of Up the North Fork for plucked banjo and atonal cello (that sets the mood of intense concentration) suddenly explodes in a
frenzied gypsy dance.
The 20-minute Pearls From the River begins like an ecstatic raga
but soon becomes a pretext for a free-form jamming.
The standout is he 15-minute Road to Catawba, more similar to
John Fahey's lengthy guitar poems than to
Rose's favorite ragas; brooding at the beginning, then tense and lively,
and finally celestial and wise at the end.
None of them ever sets off
for the skies. This is very earthly, humane and intimate music. The trio is
working inwards, not outwards.
Both the instrumentation and the careful recording attest to a new maturity.
Case in point, Rose's virtuoso playing is the cohesive (rather than explosive)
element that lends the music its stately grace.
But only one of these ambitious pieces truly captures the heart.
Jack Rose's acoustic epics on
Red Horse White Mule (Eclipse, 2001)
contributed to the revival of folk guitar solo.
The 16-minute Red Horse evokes a more tranquil and serene
John Fahey immersed in a
trance of delicate colors and feathery thoughts.
The 12-minute White Mule is slightly more nervous and more ominous,
the adult counterpart to the childish ecstasy of Red Horse.
Opium Musick (Eclipse, 2002) opens with Yaman Blues, a slow-paced,
brooding and agonizing duet of guitar and sitar.
Mountaintop Lament was equally shy and meditative, almost the exact
opposite of the exuberant emotional cascades of Red Horse White Mule.
Raag Manifestos (VHF, 2004) takes off with
the breath-taking Black Pearls from The River, one of his most
feverish ragas, and adds Ian Nagoski's electronic soundscape to his volcanic
eruptions in Hart Crane's Old Boyfriends.
Calm is restored in time for Crossing The Great Waters.
Pelt returned with another session of droning post-industrial ragas,
Pelt (VHF, 2005),
containing four lengthy massive cacophonous droning hyper-psychedelic ragas
(notably the second one, half an hour long).
It sounded like
Jack Rose had kept the best (dark ambient droning) music for the Pelt
release, as his solo Kensington Blues (VHF, 2005) was disappointing
by his standards, a hodgepodge of different styles (including a Fahey cover,
and two tracks that had already appeared on other albums).
Pelt's Heraldic Beasts (Eclipse, 2006) was an anthology.
The centerpiece of the live Skullfuck/ Bestio Tergum Degero (VHF, 2006)
was the three-part Bestio Tergum Degero.
|
(Translation by/ Tradotto da Gianluca Mantovan)
I Pelt si formarono per iniziativa dei chitarristi Mike Gangloff e Skip
James Connell nel 1993 a Richmond (Virginia). Con Pat Best e Jack Rose (sezione
ritmica di Uglyhead), il quartetto registro' il singolo Hugeness/ Frequency=Distribution
(Radioactive Rat, 1994) e il doppio album a tiratura limitata Brown Cyclopedia
(Radioactive Rat, 1995 - VHF, 1997). L'album fonde Twin Infinitives dei
Royal Trux e Daydream Nation dei Sonic Youth con maggiori trovate
di studio. Dopo l'introduttiva Anchored, ispirata dai raga alla Velvet Underground
destinati a deformare
le menti, l'atmosfera si fa selvaggiamente psichedelica
con gli aberranti 10 minuti di Green Flower, una piece free-form che percorre
la scala musicale dal canto sciamanico al muro della distorsione. La scadente
registrazione e il dilettantismo vocale declassano il concept. Tra la cacofonia
dadaista alla John Cage/Edgar Varese (Subversion Of A Cat's Eye, 4th In
Paradise) e lo sperimentalismo stile Ummagumma dei Pink Floyd (Phantom Tick)
l'album si tuffa nei 10 minuti di messa mediorientale di Absolution, con
deliranti manipolazioni e orgie di chitarre dissonanti. Almighty continua
il tema religioso con una nuova invocazione sciamanica accompagnata da forte
strimpellio. Le oscure nuvole dei 9 minuti di Who Is The Third coronano
questo monumentale tributo all'alterazione mentale.
A differenza di altri fautori del gospel lisergico i Pelt raramente sacrificano
il caos per la melodia (Total Denigration e' la sola "ballata acida"). Il
rumore e' per loro mezzo e fine. Ogni pezzo perde la propria identita' e
non rimangono che macerie sonore. L'album e' suonato praticamente senza
percussioni: le chitarre sono piu' che sufficienti a scatenare l'inferno.
Burning/Filament/Rockets (Econogold, 1996) allarga il formato agli strumentali
free-form che ricordano Bitch Magnet e Slint senza la complessita' ritmica.
Ein Platz An Der Sonne ha il sapore di un esplicito tributo agli Einsturzende
Neubaten.
Le ambizioni del quartetto condussero alle sette lunghe improvvisazioni/meditazioni
di Max Meadows (VHF, 1997). Al confine fra le suite raga-rock (Samsara),
le jam acid-rock (Sunken), il noise industriale (Abcdelancey), il folk tribale
ipnotico (Hippy War Machine) e la musica new age (Outside Listening), gli
strumentali dei Pelt fondono distorsioni psichedeliche che avvolgono la
mente e strumentazione world che apre la mente; Faust e Bardo Pond, Red
Krayola e Roy Montgomery, Third Ear Band e Dead C ma pure Cecil Taylor e
Tony Conrad.
Snake to Snake (Klang Industries) fu registrato dal vivo nel 1995 e 1996.
Gli eccessi di minimalismo e free jazz alimentano le tre epiche tracce di
Techeod (VHF, 1998), in particolare New Delhi Blues e Mu Mesons.
Jack Rose registro' pure Via St Louis (Drunken Fish, 1998) con Jason Bill
Charalambides.
Empty Bell Ringing In The Sky (VHF, 1999) e' il loro lavoro piu' psichedelico,
debitore in larga misura ai piu' indulgenti Amon Duul e Grateful Dead. If
Ghosts Are Never Forgiven e Ghost Galaxies sono tentativi molto banali di
rinascita del cosmic/raga-rock, la scomposta performance della title track
e' la loro Dead Star.
Sul loro tour de force Ayahuasca (VHF, 2001), album doppio dedicato all'ultimo
John Fahey, i Pelt spingono sull'acceleratore della loro tecnica post-psichedelica
e post-ambient. La missione di unire John Fahey, Grateful Dead, Ravi Shankar
e LaMonte Young e' sia ambiziosa che gratificante. Il raga di 16 minuti
in apertura, True Vine, e' una parata al rallentatore di ronzii tibetani,
dissonanze industriali, suoni cavernosi da archetti di chitarra e strumenti
esotici. Strutture free-form galleggiano inseguite da frammenti melodici
e ronzii perforanti, emancipati da tempo e struttura. Il tono generale e'
piu' allucinato che estatico.
Rumori di fondo piu' duri, disseminati su di un vasto spettro di frequenze,
demoliscono ogni pretesa di meditazione/contemplazione lungo il calvario
musicale lungo 26 minuti di Deer Head Apparition. Il muro del suono vibra
come un vulcano in procinto di eruttare e ruggisce in modo altrettanto minaccioso
di una piece di Gordon Mumma. Siamo quasi in territorio di Dead C. Bear
Head Apparition e' piu' calma e rada, ma anche piu' radicale nella sua cacofonia.
The Dream Of Leaping Sharks (21 minuti) e' il pezzo piu' onirico, con toni
piu' profondi, alti lamenti similsitar, e distorti frammenti melodici.
Il cuore dell'album, il tour de force nel tour de force, e' il pezzo in
tre parti A Raga Called John. I dodici minuti della prima parte sovrappongono
picking sognanti alla John Fahey a un costante crepitio di chitarra. Il
ritmo prima accelera fino ad una specie di square dance, poi si smorza e
cio' che resta e' una doccia di ronzii galattici. I venticinque minuti della
seconda parte sono una cacofonia effervescente che produce temi Buddisti
e raga strettamente intrecciati. E' forse la piece piu' radicale ed intensa
dell'album. La breve terza parte ripropone il picking calmo e atmosferico
della prima, benche' avvolto in ronzii similsitar.
L'album include pure a sorpresa due tradizionali canzoni Appalachiane (The
Cuckoo e Deep Sunny South) che vengono nobilmente riviste senza sacrificare
oltre misura l'originale. In questi pezzi si trova lo stupefacente finger-picking
di Jack Rose, un virtuoso della chitarra nel nuovo secolo.
Keyhole (Eclipse, 2001) contiene improvvisazioni dei Pelt, Keenan Lawler
e Eric Clark in un silos di grano vuoto.
Pearls From The River (VHF, 2003) e' il primo vero album in studio dei
Pelt
(nessuna nota fu registrata dal vivo), contenente tre lunghi
strumentali acustici.
Gli otto minuti di ronzio minimalista in Up the North Fork
(per banjo, baritono banjo and violoncello) costituiscono l'ouverture,
che aiuta
l'intensa concentrazione dell'ascoltatore. I venti minuti di raga
estatico in
Pearls From the
River sono bilanciati dai quindici minuti di raga meditabondo in Road
to Catawba.
Tuttavia nessuno dei due svetta. La musica è terrena, umana ed
intimistica.
Il trio lavora all'interno e non all'esterno. Sia la
strumentazione che l'attenta registrazione provano maggiore
maturita'.
In questo caso, i virtuosismi di Rose sono elemento piu' coesivo che
esplosivo,
in grado di conferire grazia espressiva alla musica.
Jack Rose fece gli epici ed acustici Red Horse White Mule (Eclipse,
2001), con
i sedici minuti di Red Horse, e Opium Musick (Eclipse, 2002).
Soprattutto il primo evoca i country-raga di John Fahey.
Raag Manifestos (VHF, 2004) decolla con il pezzo mozzafiato
Black Pearls from The River, uno dei suoi raga piu' infuocati,
mentre in Hart Crane's Old Boyfriends l'elettronica di Ian Nagoski
accompagna le abituali
eruzioni vulcaniche. La calma torna giusto in tempo per Crossing The
Great Waters.
I Pelt tornarono con una nuova serie di sommessi raga post-industriali
in Pelt
(VHF, 2005).
Apparve chiaro che Jack Rose aveva conservato la sua migliore musica
(ronzio dark ambient)
per le uscite dei Pelt, dal momento che il suo album solista
Kensington Blues
(VHF, 2005) fu piu' sottotono del solito, un miscuglio di stili
differenti
(inclusa una cover di Fahey, e due pezzi già comparsi in precedenti
album).
Heraldic Beasts (Eclipse, 2006) contenne quattro raga lunghi,
massicci, cacofonici,
rumorosi e iper-psichedelici.
Il pezzo centrale del live Skullfuck/ Bestio Tergum Degero (VHF,
2006)
fu Bestio Tergum Degero, suddivisa in tre parti.
|
