Ayahuasca

On Ayahuasca, Pelt doesn't stray much from the drone-based aesthetic they employed in their early work. Like many of Pelt's previous records, such as the feedback-soaked Max Meadows, Ayahuasca relies heavily on buzzing, rumbling noise. Underneath all the guitar hisses and groans, though, the album sees Pelt exploring unexpected varieties of drone-based music with more vigor than ever before: Mike Gangloff plays wobbling lines on the Indian ersaj throughout much of the record, while Patrick Best accompanies him on Tibetan bowls. Ayahuasca also features several reverent covers of Appalachian folk songs which, while not nonwestern, are pretty far from the LaMonte Young/Sonic Youth influences that dominated much of Pelt's early work. Although Ayahuasca is more moody and dark than Jackie-O M**********r's eclectic hippie treatise Fig. 5, the two albums both feature throbbing, freeform drones and smatterings of Indian, Middle Eastern, and Appalachian music slipping out of every crevice. Both albums are successful not only because they're densely textured and meditative, but also because they explore folk and ethnic music with more depth and breadth than their peers in the psych/drone world.