racious, it's hard to talk about drone music without sounding like a Wyndham Hill press release. Or, at worst, a Body Shop catalog. Moonbeams and starlight. The Continental Drift. Engrams. When the mainstream dips its foot into some abstract mood music, it's usually in the form of a whale-song compilation or a yoga class; something by which to float along and forget the day. Or, at worst, to chase away those Tacit-Complicity Blues.

When the time comes that Kawabata Makoto gets his crack at a Pure Moods volume—and it is surely inevitable—Sit-Down-Shut-Up-and-Chill-Out America's heads will explode. For when our favorite bearded hippie is carted on a rickshaw by his followers in Acid Mothers Temple to the top of his favorite grassy hill, he has his sights set far higher than, for instance, Mike Oldfield. My apologies to the Acid Mothers Temple for portraying them as some sort of creepy cult (though really I meant to compare them to one of those fun communal patriarchies my parents are always telling me about), but there has always seemed to be something of a spiritual component to Makoto's work, in the manner of a Buddhist monk sitting in silence for as long as It takes. Whether it's through amphetamine-fueled heaviness or, as here, cosmic drone, Makoto specializes in Oneness-With-Everything.

In this, the third installment of his Inui series for VHF, Makoto brings a bouzouki, for melody; an electric guitar, for counterpoint; an analog synthesizer, for sheets of tones; and asarangi, for mystical Indian drone (and not, as I had originally thought, to wear). After a short burst of static, Makoto takes off and never looks back. He starts with "Sui," and a chiming bouzouki pattern, sliced through with pink-noise synths, and a two-note guitar figure that emerges and subsides. Then, midway through, the guitars turn inside-out and reverse; and while, on paper, that doesn't sound like much, it takes the bottom out from under everything, and sounds unmistakably like the inside of a black hole. Unfortunately, "Ken" tries a bit of gloomy, horror-movie at most, with behind-the-wall screeches and what sounds like a car alarm in an echo chamber. It comes off forced and unwieldy, and possibly from a completely different album.

The real treat here is, of course, 47 minutes long. "Fuku" begins with a descending bouzouki pattern that lends the piece the feel of a ballad, mimicked on guitar, while the synthesizer buzzes just underneath. It bears the strangest resemblance to a less-panicked, drum-less and Ian-less, Joy Division, drawn out to post-human lengths. Over time, the curtain of analog noise grows thicker, and louder, and the guitars break-up, dispersing in the face of this holy racket, creating an intertwining din, and then backing away, and we're back where we started. Again and again, we're brought there, like a comet whose orbit keeps taking it too close to the sun, before returning to cooler climes. By the time the rumbling low-end teases its way in, all available energy has been sucked in and burned out. And if that isn't a way to brush off the troubles of a day, I don’t know what is.