Gil Barte - Claviceps Purpurea

Claviceps Purpurea sees Gil.Barte turn to botany for his psychedelia, eight tracks named after the ergot fungus that once caused mass hallucinations and, centuries later, provided a chemist with the raw material for LSD.

Barte has spent his time exploring trance states and near-death atmospheres on the Neubau, Big Science and his own Meth'O'Tapes labels, but this record for Teenage Menopause changes his method. The rhythm takes over where the drift previously dominated, and the entire album reads like a kind of field guide to altered consciousness, with the actual pharmacology of Western witchcraft standing in for vague occult signifiers. It's a truly clever conceptual pivot for an artist as committed to sound as he is to concept, and it strengthens rather than dilutes what he's doing.

The title track opens the record on its own eponymous terrain, establishing the exotic-tinged menace that runs through everything that follows. Kobold turns folk mischief into a real club kick, Martha's Doll is the strangest detour on the record, all fever-dream electronics with barely a beat to anchor it, and Cordyceps closes the album on a note that loops toward the opener, a fungal cousin framing the fungal beginning.

Rave and ritual treated as the same activity. Barte has never made this argument so directly before.

Tracklist

1. Claviceps Purpurea
2. Kobold
   
3. Swallowtail
   
4. Elhwah
   
5. Martha's Doll
   
6. Bronca
   
7. Anax
   
8. Cordyceps