In 1968, Jones recorded this live album, capturing the sound of the annual Bou Jeloud festivities that celebrate the appearance in the 15th century of a Pan-like half-man, half-goat figure said to bestow fertility, a bountiful harvest and musical secrets.

Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine is the centrepiece of Earth 2 – an imperious half-hour of sheer drone power. The soundtrack to Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda features all the beguiling hallmarks of MacLise’s sound: handheld drums, disembodied voices, field recordings of unknown provenance. Broadrick and Martin’s telepathic studio energy trades on their 30-year creative partnership, intertwining layers of rich, distorted tones, and Moor Mother’s powerful flow ties the whole bleak tableau together. Fusing the tortoise-slow crawlspace of La Monte Young-era minimalism with metallic textures, their debut album Earth 2 (1993) was released on Sub Pop during the heyday of grunge but, focusing as it did on slowly unfurling, percussion-less drones, was a million miles from the frenetic angst of labelmates Nirvana and Mudhoney.Gysin, in particular, was captivated by the music, stating that it was the sound that he wanted to hear for the rest of his life. Indeed, religious practice all over the world, from the sacred Buddhist Om to haunting Gregorian chant, continues, as it has done for centuries, to centre the drone as a sonic enabler of meditative transcendence.

From the womb – where the rushing of maternal blood is heard loud and clear at 88 decibels – through myriad historical, spiritual and subcultural pathways, our connection to the drone runs deep. The Master Musicians of Joujouka, a group of Moroccan Sufi trance musicians from the foothills of the Rif mountains, make a joyous, hypnotic cacophony. Much of her work has combined rich tones from machines such as the ARP and Buchla synthesiser with organ, harmonium and piano.Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit.

Jones’s sensitive post-production dub effects (mainly echo and reverb) were subtle, but add to the head-twisting psychedelic density of the music. Exclusively produced using the ARP 2500, a notoriously complex modular synthesiser, Radigue focused on pure drone pieces that unfurled at a glacial pace. Located in Nashville, Tennessee, Third Man Books is dedicated to publishing the best in poetry, fiction, speculative fiction, SF/F, and non-fiction with the same diversity and award-winning design that are hallmarks of our partner company, Third Man Records. Last year’s double album, Cantus, Descant, was her most ambitious record yet, featuring her vocals for the first time.

With serious volume tempered by a distinct grace, the record paved the way for early Sunn O))) among many others on the underground, and is widely regarded the vital signpost in the drone metal underground. The Master Musicians of Joujouka strongly contest the notion that drone-based music is calming: theirs is an energetic, frenetic sound. Venturing to the very furthest reaches of the drone continuum, Harry uncovers the vibrations uniting a far greater range of sounds and experience than I’d anticipated. The drone requires neither chord nor band, representing - via its infinite pliability and accessibility - the ultimate folk music: a potent audio tool of personal liberation.