Did you ever make noise into a fan as a kid and listen to what came out the other end as the swirling blades cut your voice into smaller sounds? Drone is a lot like that. The hum of the electronics, the manipulation of your own voice to create something eerie, with a warmth and comfort that comes of being in your room just making noises to amuse yourself.

Let’s take it from the top. Pocahaunted used to be two girls from California. They made music for a variety of labels, but most people know them for Island Diamonds on Not Not Fun Records from 2008. They make what’s referred to as “blissed out drone” music, which means that it’s low key and repetitive with psychedelic elements such as repetition and unusual structure.

Somewhere along the way, Pocahaunted evolved from the two girls from California, picking up new band mates and now, when they take the stage, it’s five; vocals and keyboards now joined by bassist, guitarist, and percussionist.

The stage is carefully dressed before the show, given a costume to illicit a mood, a set of silver sheets draped capture and refract the light, it moves in the wind of the fans that desperately try to keep the venue cool. The sheets are caught up in the movements of Amanda as she uses her body, her band mates and the Penecostal frenzy of the music.

The music.

The music catches immediately. The drums beat out rhythms from a future past that transports the listener to a past future. The keyboards summon you back, the vocals chant as the three singers catch harmony from one another like a cry from forgotten plains of twisted steel and asphalt. It’s folk music, music made by and for “folks.” When defined, it sounds pejorative; music for the proletariat, separate from music for the elite.

This is music for a post elite society. Where we are equal.

Watching Pocahaunted onstage is like watching a postcolonial neo-tribal anthropological exhibit. The sounds pull from sounds familiar to anyone who delved beyond the top-forty format of oldies stations. Touches of psychedelica freakouts, touches of proto-jam bands, touches of harmonized soul, touches of touches of familiar tropes expanded until the tension causes them to strain, and everyone dances upon the frayed fabric of what used to be music.

Now it’s us. It’s our moment within the venue. Pocahaunted performs not for themselves, but for us. Even when we don’t comprehend what they do, and they redouble their efforts, it’s not out of a crucial need that burns within them; it’s within us, a coldness. A distance that must be bridged, not so that they may come to us, but so that they can pull us in tighter to them even as we fear what happens when we are within their grasp.

Pocahaunted live is exhilarating. There is no other word for it as we are beckoned closer to some unknown and unknowable future but always, before we can achieve that bliss, that unity, the ritual ends. Blinking. Dazed. We come to our senses, reclaim our senses of self, and return to our lives. Those shadows where the colors are dulled and the sounds muted.

We play their music trying to capture that feeling once more, chasing a dream of a memory that we will not achieve again.