Jess and the Ancient Ones: In Levitating Secret Dreams (Official Music Video)

Finnish occult-psychedelic outfit Jess and the Ancient Ones cast a slow-burning spell with the official music video for In Levitating Secret Dreams, a highlight from the album Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes. Released by Svart Records on December 4, 2015, the track finds the band in full command of their vintage-soaked sound, while the video’s story, illustrations, and animation by Romanian visual artist Costin Chioreanu translate the song’s drift through hidden realms into tactile, dreamlike imagery.

Inside The Aquarius Tapes

Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes arrived as a deepening of Jess and the Ancient Ones’ language, melding 60s and 70s acid rock, garage psych, and glimmers of proto-metal into a focused, mood-rich statement. The title nods to countercultural mystique, and across the album the band digs into themes of inner awakenings, cosmic thresholds, and the shadowy spaces between ritual and revelation. In Levitating Secret Dreams sits near the album’s core, a piece that embodies their fondness for hypnotic grooves, minor-key drama, and a vocalist who can shift from ethereal poise to incantatory power.

Sound, Space, and the Pull of the Groove

The band’s palette is instantly familiar to devotees of classic psych and occult rock, yet it carries a distinct, modern edge. A warm, overdriven rhythm section sets the foundation: bass lines coil patiently around the drums, carving out a pocket that is both meditative and propulsive. Twin guitars move between crystalline arpeggios and thick, fuzzed chords, often layered with tremolo and reverb that extend the harmonies outward like vapor trails. A vintage-sounding organ becomes the gravitational center, shimmering at the edges before swelling into widescreen passages that evoke candlelit rooms and star-mapped ceilings.

Vocally, the performance floats above the arrangement with luminous clarity. Lines are shaped for maximum atmosphere, inviting the listener into a private rite more than a public declaration. The production favors warmth and headroom, giving every instrument a sense of air. Subtle room ambience, tasteful delay, and saturated tones create a living, analog feel that suits the song’s subject matter. Momentum builds in waves, gathering tension before releasing into brief instrumental breaks where the organ and guitars converse in swirling, hypnotic figures.

Dreams, Rituals, and the Lure of the Unseen

As the title implies, In Levitating Secret Dreams turns on the hinge between the waking world and the subconscious. The lyrics signal an inward journey, less about narrative than about sensation, initiation, and the shimmer of images that surface when language loosens its grip. The vocabulary of occult-psych is present in the track’s atmosphere: candles and corridors, symbols glimpsed in passing, the suggestion that insight requires surrender. Rather than draw a hard line between light and darkness, the song lingers in liminal spaces, privileging emotional resonance over didactic meaning.

Costin Chioreanu’s Animated Vision

Costin Chioreanu’s work has long been recognized for its textured, hand-drawn intensity, blending the surreal with the ceremonial. For In Levitating Secret Dreams, he designed the story, illustrations, and animation, channeling the track’s slow ascent into a procession of images that feel extracted from a collective dream. His frames often carry the grain of the medium itself, with layered washes, striking linework, and a palette that shifts between muted earth tones and sudden, searing accents.

The animation operates on dream logic. Figures emerge and recede, symbols overlap, and landscapes dissolve into sigils before reconstituting in altered form. Time appears elastic, mirroring the song’s patient crescendos and suspended chords. Rather than literalize the lyrics, Chioreanu creates a parallel narrative in which memory, mysticism, and metamorphosis intersect. The result is a visual language that suggests initiation without prescribing a single interpretation.

Music and Image in Careful Convergence

One of the video’s achievements is the way motion syncs with musical dynamics without resorting to simple beat-matching. When the band leans into a heavier passage, the imagery darkens or expands in scope. When the vocals drift into a more intimate register, the camera tightens on a detail, an emblem, a face morphing into a constellation. The pacing is measured, resisting quick cuts in favor of evolution and accrual. This sense of continuity allows the viewer to acclimate to the video’s symbolic vocabulary, making the closing movements feel earned rather than imposed.

A Place in the Modern Occult-Psych Continuum

Jess and the Ancient Ones operate at an intersection where garage grit meets ceremonial psychedelia. Their songs draw from a lineage that includes acid rock and early heavy riffage, while their arrangements lean on melody and mood over sheer pyrotechnics. The organ’s centrality ties them to a classic tradition, yet the writing keeps the sound from ossifying into homage. It is a living idiom, refreshed by contemporary production and an ear for dynamics. In Levitating Secret Dreams, realized in tandem with Chioreanu’s animation, underscores how much this music benefits from visual storytelling that shares its sense of scale and intention.

Listening Notes

The opening establishes a trance-like cadence, with drums and bass drawing a circle that the guitars and organ slowly illuminate.
Vocals enter as an invitation rather than a proclamation, prioritizing tone and inflection to build atmosphere.
Textural guitar figures cue the first swell, where harmonies widen and the organ rises into view.
An instrumental passage arrives at the song’s midpoint, allowing the band’s interplay to breathe and emphasizing the layered production.
The return of the chorus feels both familiar and newly charged, as if the earlier motifs have been reconfigured by what has transpired in the arrangement.

Svart Records and the Cult of the Underground

Releasing the track via Svart Records aligns the single with a label known for championing heavy, psychedelic, and wayward sounds. The imprint’s aesthetic favors sonic character and archival sensibility, qualities that dovetail with Jess and the Ancient Ones’ use of saturated tones, vintage timbres, and long-form compositions. In Levitating Secret Dreams exemplifies the kind of artist-label synergy that gives underground music a durable home and a discerning audience.

Credits and Release Details

Song: In Levitating Secret Dreams
Artist: Jess and the Ancient Ones
Album: Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes
Label: Svart Records
Release date: December 4, 2015
Video credits: Story, illustrations, and animation by Costin Chioreanu

In Levitating Secret Dreams stands as a striking convergence of sound and image. It captures the essence of Jess and the Ancient Ones’ craft, where vintage textures and esoteric themes serve a song-first sensibility, and where animation becomes an echo chamber for the music’s lingering afterglow.