As the Middletown, Maryland instrumental trio Admiral Browning embrace their inner carnival barker on the 2009 EP, Magic Elixir (Dancing Sasquatch Records), it becomes increasingly difficult to place them in one genre or another. There’s something heavily progressive about the riffing and soloing of guitarist Matt LeGrow, but the songs, which are largely led by the guitar, could still be classified as stoner, if only for that. The rhythm section of Ron McGuiness (bass) and Tim Otis (drums) are just as ready to lead the charge, and at any moment and a quick switch from part to part, they might. The music is adventurous, familiar and inspired. Straightforward and somehow not.

Magic Elixir opens with “Vortexer,” showing at 8:56 Admiral Browning’s knack for allowing a song to evolve naturally. Though I don’t doubt considerable cognition goes into their writing process, the flow works at least for the most part. They stay away from verse/chorus structures, which is fair since without vocals they have neither, and the linear path “Vortexer” takes feels every bit as correct as it possibly could. Samples throughout the EP provide a spoken element, and at no point does it feel like something else is missing.

“Ol’ Martini Man” and “No Good Stones” follow immediately. The former at its root has a heady stoner boogie but rather than solely repeating the same progression over and over, uses it as a foundation for further development. “Ol’ Martini Man” comes off more straightforward than “Vortexer,” but not so much so that the songs don’t work one to the next. Likewise, the transition to “No Good Stones,” which is based around acoustic guitar and a sample running its entire 3:48, is as fluid as one could expect. “No Good Stones” keeps to a more staid tact, the guitar peppered with bluesy lead lines but holding basically the same rhythm the whole time.

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