by Tom Schulte
Salient in Trance to the Sun's dreary, gothic beauty is the voice of gloom queen Ingrid Blue. Trance to the Sun is a deep, dark hole. Go ahead, push in your soul and follow it in. Synthesizers and reverb-drenched guitars frame the black canvas here. Combined with Blue's soft, gossamer song, the darkwave dear and you have a winning combination for contemporary goth. The organizing principle behind the group is multi-instrumentalist Ashkelon Sain. Sparse and spooky, this is the soundtrack for doing the midnight creep. A lot of these groups owe much to early space psychedelia. Trance to the Sun pays homage to such Syd Barrett-esque inspiration with a mesmerizing version of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun." File them with mid-period Cocteau Twins and Legendary Pink Dots.