Sunkings - Soul Sleeping

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...

I don't normally go for this kind of thing but the sheer production skills envolved here are amazing. The sunkings have made a very dark twisted answer to the boards of canada. I wouldn't lable this trance music at all. It's just really lush electronic music that can really carry one away (normally to quite scary places.) I haven't heard any of their other stuff so I don't know how this compares.