Psychical by Ensemble Economique

Brian Pyle is well-known for his enterprising shamanism as one half of Nor Cal improv gurus Starving Weirdos, but when off-roading as Ensemble Economique he tends to stumble down even stranger psychogenic pathways. Psychical is Pyle’s latest under the banner, and also his most drugged and dense. Thick, humid banks of synth-fog descend over looped, cultic hand-drums, strangely panned waves of brainwash, and snippets of third world voices mumbling about blood and marijuana.

As the moniker comically alludes to, EE is Pyle’s solo vessel, although his wife Phoenix intones possessed poetry over the war drums of “Forever Eyes” and Tom Carter (of Charalambides) cameos with searing white light guitar on the creep-out raga, “Real Things.” The pieces dissolve into one another like stages of a dark trip, soundtracking a lost soul convoy into hostile territories, spectral voices murmuring beneath looming monsoons.