Welcome to an acid-free altered state. The fiery onslaught of 2019's twin double-live albums, Psychedelic Backfire I and II, has become a simmer, as Elephant9 find space, slow, and strengthen their songs' subliminal architecture. They had previously typified a Norwegian scene inspired by Motorpsycho's prog-jazz sprawl and Supersilent's impro-noise (with Ståle Storløkken the linking, omnipresent eminence). Now Elephant9 deal instead in increment and atmosphere. Each tune is an immersive room of its own, misty tendrils curling round the listener. The ritualistic title track alone demands obsessive listens, offering padding, stealthy bass, guitar suggesting a folky Jonny Greenwood, and, from Storløkken's Rhodes, the shivery atmosphere of The Doors' ‘Riders on the Storm’. If electric Miles stays discernable in the distance, this music's warm glow suggests other corners of the 1970s' cusp: sunlit, psychoanalysed Californian film noir, and Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters; Curtis Mayfield's symphonic soul, too, as, on ‘Rite of Accession’, slippery Mellotron strings and uptight, high-wire guitar dance like scorpions. But these associations are a small part of this exemplary, contemporary Norwegian music, putting jazz and rock at the group's idiosyncratic service. The concisely intuitive musicianship ranges from the nocturnal prowl of ‘Tale of Secrets’ to the sudden eruption of ‘Chemical Boogie’, where Storløkken's Hammond drags Georgie Fame's Flamingo Club into the Outer Limits. ‘Sojourn’ typifies the special space carved here, from its melodically rippling bass undercurrent to glassy keyboard detail, its suspended reverie all done in three minutes. Woozy closer ‘Solar Song’ then sees the organ atomised and finally disintegrate, as if this magically crafted album has gone up in smoke. Arrival of the New Elders' arresting ambience will elevate and expand any room where it's played. And right now, who doesn't want that?