Self-released album from McCann whose recent run of choral drone works have been a big hit round VT. This one comes in an edition of 75 hand-numbered copies on McCann’s own Recital imprint. Not as infinitely layered and overtly euphoric as his recent sides, Prelusion has more of a minimal Eno vibe, with flat-lined drones spinning with all of the slow motion appeal of Andrew Chalk at his most lonesome. Music from way beyond the long blank from one of its most unflinching architects.

Excellent double cassette set in moulded plastic cases with a full-colour booklet of landscape photography from McCann. This is some of McCann’s most primitive American drone creations, matching the sense of continental American scale that marks out the work of fellow American minimalists like Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young and – especially – Henry Flynt, while touching on the memory vague approach of Mark McGuire via primitive folk instrumentation. Recorded to four track while holidaying with his family in Mammoth, CA in 2009/2010, Mammoth Mountain has a feel of personal revelation encoded in a series of short relatively unadorned solos for violin, banjo, guitar and assorted strings that expands on the basic drone aspect that thinkers like Harry Smith and John Fahey heard in the music of The Stanley Brothers and The Carter Family et al, generating oddly affecting folk-drone miniatures that have a wonkier, more feral aspect than Pelt’s similarly motivated explorations of the Hillybilly Theatre Of Eternal Music. Ancient/futuristic American Primitive with a deeply personal appeal and a raw hands-on aspect could almost be Matthew Valentine.