Immaterial Possession Summons a Psychedelic Séance

So you’re an eager little lightweight stoner, just outta college, on your first big trip abroad. After surviving Christiania and having found Amsterdam to be no big deal, you decide to hop continents to Morocco and end up passed out on a throw-rug in a questionable hashish den. The debut album from Immaterial Possession is the music that’s belly dancing its way in slow motion through your swirling brain as you’re zonked out.

The Athens, Georgia-based quartet conjures a psych/prog/folk hybrid straight out of a late ‘60s/early ‘70s commune, slogging along at an unconcerned, self-absorbed pace, more in the ways of a seductive séance than a full-blown freakout. The music of the self-titled LP (released on Athens’ Elephant 6-related Cloud Recordings) seems to exist within in its own exploratory meditation, though obscurities like Spirogyra (not to be confused with algae or the jazz fusion band, or Spiro Agnew for that matter) and those Finders Keepers Persian psych/prog compilations offer similar stimulation. And yeah, there’s a flute involved. It’s not so much a beautiful day as it is a long, clammy night that ends with some hippie girl you don’t even know crying in the corner.