PELT - Untitled

Mysterious and damn near static, the drone of the first

movement of this new Pelt effort reminds anyone who might have

forgotten in the meantime that Jack Rose, Patrick Best, Mike Gangloff and newcomer

Mikel Dimmick are still among the leading exponents of a stretched-out,

psychedelic music, grappling with parallel worlds and transcendent realities.

Once you get through the first 14 minutes of stasis unscathed (almost a hurdle whose

overcoming proves vital to properly absorbing the record), the

second movement unfolds with a rich range of accents and sonic

possibilities.

Rose's Indian-flavored dissertation evolves into a

climax from which a new oasis of calm emerges: vibraphone and cymbals

distill an underground intensity, sustained by a magical disenchantment, an

elusive ritualism that winds through the folds of a boundless expanse where

distant cosmic ripples can be felt. This is the record's peak moment of

interest, thanks to a noise-driven scenography (or "scenographic

noise", call it what you will) streaked with screeching overtones and stark diagonal

violin lines (in the final movement it's Best's cello that gets flogged),

opening up a chasm of mystery and seeming, at the same time, to want to upend the

mathematical hinges of certain avant-garde jazz through a play of refractions and

esoteric chiaroscuro. Pelt's is a universe brimming with symbols to

decipher. A “sonic” translation of which the four musicians from Richmond now seem to be

undisputed masters, even though some moments are hampered by longueurs that

could easily have been avoided.

The third meditation comes across as heavily constrained, as does

the first, for that matter, trapped in a stasis that hardly lends itself to changes of

course, giving itself over to a stream-of-consciousness flow of buzzing, hissing drones,

scattered crumbs of noise and out-of-focus timbres. An experience of surrender

and self-loss, in which the sound doesn't grow toward any outward development,

but rather toward an absent backdrop where the invisible constellations of the

soul — human and universal — converge. A modus operandi that

comes across as an emotional tension in which the interplay between the musicians, at the

very moment the music is brought to the surface, proves essential and

decisive, but only when there's a perfect unity of intent.

La

The difference between Pelt and their countless “imitators” lies precisely in this great

“telepathic” ability to let a sound flow as if it were a source of

stimuli and sensations in which the sum of the parts outweighs the individual

elements. And this, despite the fact that Rose, with his solo work, has by now built up

considerable influence, especially in some of the more “softer” moments, where the

Indian sonic dimension is inevitably filtered through the lens

of the experience of Fahey and

Basho. More than a finished work with every single part perfectly defined,

then, this “Untitled” comes across as a snapshot of a

work in progress, perhaps pointing toward more substantial future outcomes,

ever closer to the heart of “eternal music”.

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30/04/2026