Pelt

Pelt roam the drone landscape, by turns irascible, fiery and rapturous, turning ornate musical circles amid an avalanche of tones and textures. With a history that now stretches back more than quarter-century, Pelt build improvised symphonies amid what has become an expanding collective of musicians -- members Mike Gangloff, Patrick Best, Mikel Dimmick and Nathan Bowles also figure in an array of ear-stretching, transformative ensembles that range from Gangloff's work with Eight Point Star and with his wife, Cara, to Bowles' trio releases, to the Black Twig Pickers and the Spiral Joy Band and the music of the late Jack Rose, a Pelt member for 11 years and an acclaimed solo guitarist. 
 Sometimes meditative, sometimes furious, often both those and more, Pelt's music has over time cut a slow arc toward acoustic strings, struck and bowed metal, reed organ drones, and washes of piano, all played expertly with an assortment of extended and traditional techniques that can carry the sounds into seemingly electronic realms. As a writer in the Washington Post put it many years ago, "They not become giants; they've become the mountain."