Guanaco

"Caves of Holy Light" 3" CDR

Dust Wind Tales

Genre: psych drone, drone

October 2009

Mellow and trancelike, Guanaco's Caves of Holy Light is a sublime psych-drone release whose major weakness is its brevity. The major attraction here is the epic title track, which is comprised of periodic, shimmering guitar chords on a bed of luminescent feedback. It's marvellously hypnotic, transporting the listener to a calm and vaguely magical desert night, with the red moon just above the horizon. Although it suffers from a lack of originality that is inevitable in such a specialized genre, I still consider it one of the strongest psych-drone compositions I've heard in awhile. In addition to "Caves of Holy Light," three shorter, accompanying pieces are provided. The tense yet wonderfully meditative "Spinning Sunburst" is the best among them; I would love to see Guanaco's lone member, Lex Panayi, try fleshing it out into a longer composition. As it is, however, Caves of Holy Light is a captivating, promising, and frustratingly concise release.

Michael Tau

[Vitals: 4 tracks, distributed by the label, released 2009]