Sunkings - Soul Sleeping FLAC

The Sunkings dropped SOUL SLEEPING as trance was streadily becoming the genre du jour of techno. Blue Room, in particular, was a label well-known for trance, and the traces of this are immediately evident in the drone and beats of "Tongues of Fungus," but with the sonically dense, atmospheric "Flesh Canvas," there's nary a cheesy trance riff to be found. This wears off quickly, however, as "Isle of the Departed" wanders a bit too much with its prog-rock guitar and sub-Lisa Gerrard vocal ("Eden Reprised" loses the guitar, but retains the vocals, unfortunately). "Tang" delivers prototypical psy-trance, and the other tracks seem to meld together in a indistinguishable drone. The breaks on "Talisman" break things up, but it's a little too late. Might be better to sleep on this one.

An acquaintance recommended me this record saying - if you like Saafi Brothers, you will like this one too. Now when I'm familiar with them, Sunkings don't sound like Saafi to me, but I can see his point - and I like both indeed. Yeah, it's trance(y) downtempo having some connections with regular psy-trance (most notably - psy-trance label that released them :).
It's really psychedelic, but in some more direct meaning than in case of psytrance. Oh, and very trance/y as well, but again, it's halucinogenic, not just trance. So you can call it 'psychedelic & trancey' in the meaning of the way it works, not just as a name of genre being a bastardized techno :)
And that's not the end of funny side of Sunkings' music - If you would like to compare it to other genres, the most similar would be ambient techno. Techno, not the bastardised, but the angelized one :) And then some plain ambient, without any techno at all. When they make an exception and do play a psytrance track, they call it 'Tang' - and yes, it sounds like Tangerine Dream - updated to psytrance standards, without lacking its virtues.
Let's say, it's psychedelic-tribal-ambient-down-trance-tempo, ok? With some idm-ish tendencies as well :)
There are some twisted, even dark moments on the album, but overall it's uplifting and cheerful (a bit lofty at places) music.
For those of you looking here because of Blue Room Released - here's some Juno Reactor hints too: some track endings sounds like Juno Reactor's moodier moments, and the vocals on 'Soul Sleeping' are delivered by Taz Alexander later known with her work with Juno R. She's quite cool here, and the guys left her enough place to show her talent - without making regular songs from mostly ambient tracks.
The production of the album pays more attention to the trance/halucynogeinc aspect than to detail, but the tracks are still rich enough. There could be more diversity in arrangements if just floating with music is not enough for you, but for me they're just okay.
It's deep, it's mesmerising, maybe it's not one of the most popular Blue Room releases, but one of the strongest ones. Something between old school electronica (Krautrock era), Orb / System 7 / early Warp Rec. and stripped-down Bent. Plus some hints to acid-house-rea Coil. Quite good compliment, isn't it?
It would probably sit comfortably in Em:t catalog - still I'm not sure as I know it only partially... and now I can't afford to learn it better ;)
If that's still not enough for you, listen closely to the very end of the album, you will see...