PELT - Dauphin Elegies

"Dauphin Elegies" is the new offering from Pelt, a band fundamental to the development of a certain strand of impro/drone psychedelia.

A "normal" record, with little appetite for adventure, this new work only confirms the American ensemble's uninspired moment, here content to cruise with the handbrake on rather than set their sonic imagination free, as had often happened in the past (suffice it to recall the sublime results achieved on the grooves of "Brown Cyclopaedia" from 1995 and "Ayahuasca" from 2001).

Along the hypnotic backdrop of "Waning Crescent" (an endless, suffocating tunnel where the Dead C of "Driver UFO" and the most depressed Robedoor seem to have arranged to meet), we're thus pushed through fifty-six-odd minutes of stretched-out, fluid sounds that never truly manage to break through the wall of perception, instead spreading out into the void with studied mastery (the same dissertation for screeching strings and free vocal ramblings of "Fire Signs Along The Field" feels all too calculated in its broad arc of light and shade).

And while, for its part, "Crown Of Comets" is a mini-symphony for tinkling crystals recorded in the cave at Falls Ridge, Virginia, it's only with the sprawling "Cast Out To Deep Waters" (31 minutes!) that the band truly remembers it was once great.

An epic, grandiloquent drooning jam, rightfully among the most important tracks of the year, "Cast Out To Deep Waters" opens rifts of contemplation onto sidereal spaces and dead nebulae, with the violin, melancholy and feather-light, intent on following the fate of a life destined for ruin.

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18/07/2008