Trance to the Sun
Urchin Tear Soda

This is the Album (capital A) by Trance To The Sun.

I'll say it right away: the five stars for this record could be justified just for track number 4, "Swing Lower", whose slow and decadent musical litany culminates, in the last part, in a splendidly slow violin solo (or MIDI keyboard effect? the doubt remains) coming from some Higher Plane and is a candidate to be the perfect frame for the inner torment of the common modern man.

Dark esoteric music. Yes, because I would avoid any other term like "Gothic" or "Wave-Darkwave". It lacks the cataleptic-apocalyptic drama to be defined as gothic; it lacks a certain melodic dynamism to be defined as dark-wave. And surely this is precisely a strength of the group, managing to create an original blend from their own.

For the record, I cannot claim here that it is a "historic" or essential group for lovers of certain related musical genres: this is because, to be fair, the other albums (excluding the first one, also worthy of a review by... who? let's see... oh yes! I know... me!) objectively risk being tedious and even a bit boring (what needs to be said, needs to be said). But this Urchin Tear Soda is the perfect circle of elegant shrubs that breaks the disordered row of ancient trees. This forest-like language of mine does not stem from a "conversion" to the Greens, but from the dominant musical atmospheres of the album, which already from the cover seems willing to drag the unsuspecting visitor into a dense maze of forest ghosts.

And certainly, never as in this case must the feelings lead to imaginations related to the themes, because it is not at all simple to venture into them realistically, given the high (and unfair) lack of fame of the group renders the lyrics "legendary rare treasures"; in short, they are nowhere to be found, not present in the booklet as well as on the Net. But it is equally fantastic to let oneself be lulled by the fairytale notes, to let oneself be transported to the mentioned places accompanied by the sweet voices of the perfect singer Zoe Alexandra Wakefield.

Someone might repeatedly wrinkle their nose in front of "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", which, as many will know, is nothing more than a cover of the pinkfloydian track of the same name. In reality, it consists of a very original rearrangement, and together with the first track of the album, "Calling All Vanished Airplanes", and the immense and already mentioned "Swing Lower", represents one of the episodes that justifies the "five stars" given to the album.

Sensory abandonment.