Pelt, Keenan Lawler & Eric Clark - Keyhole II (Eclipse Records, 2003)

A1 Untitled
B1 Untitled
C1 Untitled
D1 Untitled

On May 13, 2001, at the Louisville (KY) Visual Arts Associationís gallery at the Water Tower was host to the Keyhole ensemble. Ensemble members include Eric Clark, a metal worker who made some of the singing bowls and the bronze didgeridus played here, Patrick Best, Mike Gangloff, and Jack Rose, who also play as the trio Pelt, and Keenan Lawler, who is known for electronically modifying the sounds of a cello and National steel guitar. This performance was completely acoustic, however, with the only sonic treatment being the reverb lent by the galleryís high ceiling.
"My memories of this show are of the incredible resonance of the Water Tower gallery, just an amazing alive quality to the air that let each note linger on and on and that filled the quieter moments with breath and inevitability. At one point I remember being lifted, compelled to climb to a balcony over the room and lean out to play a singing bowl. If this drops, I recall thinking as I stirred the heavy brass, we may lose an audience member...but this sound is necessary. Awhile later, a man fell out of his seat and a woman who had been lying on the floor sat up suddenly and cracked her head on a glass table." Mike Gangloff.
Eclipse Records

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Pelt, Keenan Lawler & Eric Clark - Keyhole (Eclipse Records, 2000)

A1 Untitled
B1 Untitled

This album is drawn from a pre-dawn session in a stone silo at Mount Saint Francis, a Franciscan friary just north of the Kentucky-Indiana state line. Four of the musicians, Keenan Lawler and Pelt members Patrick Best, Mike Gangloff, and Jack Rose, had played earlier that night at Rudyard Kipling's Café in Louisville. They were joined by Eric Clark, a multi-instrumentalist and metal worker who makes musical instruments, such as singing bowls and bronze didgeridus. Mikal Dimmick used a stereo microphone to capture events as they unfolded in the early morning hours of 12 July 2000. Only acoustic instruments were played and no electronic effects or processing were used.
Eclipse Records

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Pelt - Snake To Snake (Klang Industries, 1996)

A Sun Is Apart No. 2
B1 Gavanji I
B2 Gavanji II

Good God, where did this record come from? I've listened to the thing about ten times now and I'm still beside myself. I guess I should've paid a whole lot more attention to Brown Cyclopaedia so I would've had some inkling of the shape of things to come. Max Meadows finds Pelt exploring the inner- and outermost reaches of avant-flipped psych-noise like an evangelical preacher studies the four gospels. The band hops on somebody's magic carpet and takes the rug for a very heady ride across no fewer than three continents and at least a dozen time zones. I hear bits of Ash Ra Tempel, Charalambides, Agitation Free, Ya Ho Wha 13, and Skullflower, along with a heaping dose of cracked invention straight from the digits and crania of Pelt. Max Meadows features a wonderful blend of high-octane drones, quixotic eastern boodle, and freedom-grasp histrionics that combines to form one of the better listens I've had during the past six months. It's quite heartening to know this Virginia troupe is tending shop in the here and now (as opposed to across the drink and/or 25 years ago in time) and I might even have a chance to see 'em live if I play my cards right. And speaking of their "live" performance, Snake to Snake captures Pelt on two separate occasions during the '95-'96 basketball season that display the band in exceptional form. I'm thinking the resplendent stigmas of the desert Crocus must have been carried across land and sea on these particular nights because the music sounds as if it was bathed in a warm orange dye and hung out to dry beneath the starlight. Of note is side two's "Gavanji II," a Fricke-meets-Radeulescu eastern-fuelled power summit that'll have you floating above the shifting sands before you can exchange your nickels for rupees. Max Meadows and Snake to Snake make for perfect sonic companions while enjoying a casual read through the Koran -- and hey, even if you can't read Arabic, the music will make all that crazy writing look just that much cooler. I believe it's time to turn my answering machine back on and re-establish contact with the disjected minions of the drug-plugged hinterland -- cuz if I don't, Pelt are liable to release another three albums of prime cosmic huff right under my nose and I'll no doubt be the last poor bastard to smell 'em.
Opprobrium

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Pelt - Skullfuck / Bestio Tergum Degero (VHF Records, 2006)

1 Calais To Dover 20:34
2 Bestium Tergum Degero pt. 1 17:26
3 Bestium Tergum Degero pt. 2 5:10
4 Bestium Tergum Degero pt. 3 1:56

Limited edition live CD released for the band to sell on their 2006 European tour. Contrary to the Grateful Dead reference in the title, “Skullfuck” is a tight recording of a single, intense November 2005 performance from NYC’s Knitting Factory. The set begins with an epic group arrangement of Jack Rose’s “Calais To Dover,” (from his Kensington Blues LP) with Jack’s 12 string shadowed by Mike Gangloff’s fiddle, and the thick drone of Mikel Dimmick and Pat Best’s Harmonium and Sruti’s. The three part “Bestio” suite follows, with the group moving to Tibetan bowls and gongs, building up a huge sheet of sound which peaks in a brief “encore” of wild gong smashing.
VHF Records

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Pelt - Ayahuasca (VHF Records, 2001)

1-1 True Vine 16:42
1-2 Deer Head Apparition 26:57
1-3 The Cuckoo 6:06
1-4 Deep Sunny South 4:33
1-5 Raga Called John, Pt. I 12:10
2-6 The Dream of Leaping Sharks 21:06
2-7 Bear Head Apparition 10:48
2-8 Will You Pray For Me 3:29
2-9 Raga Called John, Pt. II 25:39
2-10 Raga Called John, Pt. III 6:12

A sprawling follow-up to 1999’s critical and commercially successful release Empty Bell Ringing In The Sky, Ayahuasca represents the most comprehensive survey of Pelt activities to date. Recorded over a period of more than two years at various live and studio sessions, the double CD shows the heavily-bearded trio broadcasting from some lesser-known and newly-discovered corners of the drone-omniverse. Most striking about the record is the inclusion of several traditional tunes, arranged for the group’s eclectic instrumentation. While the band has been performing some acoustic material for several years and let some sneak out on the limited edition For Michael Hannas CDR, Ayahuasca is the first release to fully explore this part of their repertoire. "The Cuckoo" and ‘Deep Sunny South" are traditional Appalachian numbers, played and sung with considerable skill and feeling. The sawing bowed acoustic guitar on "The Cuckoo" and the rolling banjo and Tibetan bowl accompaniment on "Deep Sunny South" draw a direct line between raw/folk music traditions and the deep, visceral drone music that Pelt have specialized in over the past several years. Combining the two styles neatly, "A Raga Called John" features Jack Rose’s very, very fine country-blues/Fahey-influenced fingerstyle guitar over a shifting backdrop of hurdy-gurdy and concertina, before giving way to tanpuras overrun by fretless banjo. Of course, on top of all of this easily comprehensible music there’s plenty of ear-cleansing ecstatic drone, from the two long flotation-inducing trios for bowed electrics and Esraj to the wall-shaking electric hurdy-gurdy mania of "Bear Head Apparition." Truly a record for our times, such as they are.
VHF Records

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