3 out of 5

Label: VHF

Producer: Pelt?

So Allmusic gives this a pretty glowing review.  Apparently Pelt made quite a splash at the time, and I can only assume that its the same splash that makes people dig on Sonic Youth, since this initial album – seated more in feedback and guitar explorations than the drone and folk that would dominate future albums – is absolutely of that latter-era post whatever Youthy scene.  Thankfully its less wankery, but not enough to prevent dickholes from attending live shows and then bragging about attendance later even though they talked through the whole thing.  Whether or not capturing said dickholes in all their talky glory on the live tracks ‘Absolution’ and ‘Almighty’ was a happy inclusion or just happenstance, who knows… but it in turn adds to the slightly different vibe of ‘Cyclopaedia’, where the boys can be pictured in torn T’s smirking while paddling on their guitars, compared to the more sober and studied (and more experimental, truly) work to come.  There are moments here that separate the disc from other bands that puttered around in this scene, though.  Besides the questionable singing on opener ‘Anchored,’ the 7+ minute flow of drifting guitar shows an early grasp on using ebb and flow for long durations to keep things interesting.  Equally so for ‘Who Is the Third Who Walks Always Beside You?’, toward album’s end, but from a totally different listening perspective – a much less abrasive affair that uses drifting guitar swipes to bend the pacing of the track subtly.  And in the middle we get the noisome ‘Phantom Tick,’ with its thumping beat; Pelt may not frequently resort to such structure normally, but its again evidence of how the group has always attempted to encompass a wide range of sounds and styles and promote them to a cohesive whole.

Which is where ‘Brown’ becomes a fractured listen, for me.  It feels like pieces stitched together instead of something that you can just let yer brain gears cogitate on.  Meaning I get stuck at some points, thoughts wandering, whereas I love when I get drawn into this world of noise and can’t escape, emotions mushed into the layers of sounds.  But using more traditional improvisational / cut-up tricks like tape loops and conversation snippets, along with those live tracks (which do go on for a bit with too much ‘let’s just hit this one note for a while’) – and the singing is just out of place here, way too de-tuned post-rock sounding for this style of music – I’m not sure if I would’ve returned to Pelt after this disc despite those highlights.  I think those highlights wouldn’t have been as notable if I didn’t see the roots of what was to come.  So ‘Cyclopaedia’ might thus be one of the bands’ more digestible albums for those not wanting to commit to longer form versions of this style, but I think for those who stuck around with the group or fans who started with the later discs, its become more of a historical note than something to return to for frequent listens.