Trance to the Sun existed between 1990 and 2001; they were a band who were considered groundbreaking in their time. It's not hard to see why, as their dark, artistic experimentation still sounds innovative today. This best-of album compiles material from throughout their existence, including an unreleased track and a rare Cocteau Twins cover (When Mama Was Moth). Singers Zoe Alexandra Wakefield, Ingrid Blue and Dawn Wagner provide vocals that vary between the airy and atmospheric and powerful wailing, delivering lyrics that are strange and vivid. The musical backdrop is a creative mix of experimental, gothic, ambient, dreampop, prog, electronic, plus a touch of psych-folk in Spider Planet and metal in Thistle Lurid. With the exceptions of the Cocteau Twins cover and the delicate, predominantly instrumental, dreampop number August Rain v. 1, this is not really strongly melodic music, but it is engaging due to its sheer intensity and its undeniably original approach.

Trance to the Sun is a product of the 90's goth movement and that of artist Ashkelon Sain. He and a myriad of other artists and vocalists created the several albums that were released by this band from 1994 through 2001. Projekt Records has released this album which spans their history and is subtitled "The Finest Works". The album presents us with 13 spine-tingling ethereal and psychadelic goth, including an unreleased track "Winter Furnace Winds" from the 1997 unfinished album and a cover of Cocteau Twins' track "When Mama Was Moth". This all comes out long after the band has disbanded, though coincides with a reunion and live performance at the May 2007 Convergence 13 festival.

I didn't really catch this band much the first time around and so what is contained on this album is as good as new for me as I'm sure it will be for many listeners and readers. What is presented is very innovative, yet relating well to the influences of other goth and ethereal groups of the time. The arrangement of tracks are not in chronological order as you might expect though they flow well, blending and mixing together into one large amorphous sound. The tracks are long with a lot of repetitive psychadelia throughout really invoking a lot of various emotions and moods.

Though I recognize the beauty and intelligence in much of the music, I do struggle with some of the album, maybe because of the psychadelic nature which I feel belongs more with the 70's and Jefferson Airplane and related bands. Many of the track names are somewhat indicative of this such as "Olive the Slut", "Spider Planet" and "Spider Like" among others. However, the goth and ethereal elements shine through and are the saving grace for the album and the band in general. Much of the album has a harsh distorted element to it with solid beats and guitars as a driving force that in many ways are the definition of gothic music.

I don't know if this album or the coinciding live performance is any indication of the band getting together for any more releases or not. Whatever the case may be, this album is a welcome addition to the collection of any fan, new or old as we explore the unique sounds of Trance to the Sun.

Trance to the Sun is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Ashkelon Sain. In 1989 he began to compose his trademark atmospheric soundscapes which resulted in two selfreleased cassettes: 1990's Volcano and 1991's Dusk. This project matured in 1993 when vocalist Zoe Alexandra Wakefield joined. With 1994's debut album Ghost Forest a very fertile period for the band began. Despite various line up changes (each album featured different guest musicians and three vocalists fronted the band) the sound remained the same all along. Ashkelon was in firm charge of the songwriting, each composition was clearly the fruit of his mind. He combined elements of dreampop, dark ambient, psychedelia, goth, industrial and darkwave into an attractive blend.

Spiders, Aether & Rain is an overview of the finest works that this band has brought about. Elongated tracks dominate this compilation, only two are under four minutes, one even lasts a full ten minutes. Repetitive, mind-inducing patterns play an important role and they work better when stretched over a longer period of time. The songs waver from dreamy, delicate listening stuff to tracks with dense walls of distorted guitars. From the futuristic, floating synths of "Olive the Slut" to the warm, airy strings-and-voice of "August Rain Volume 3". The female vocalists need some extra consideration because their distinctive voices have a considerable impact. Zoe Alexandra Wakefield's voice is comforting and musing that's why she appears on the more meditative songs while Ingrid Blue sounds like a little serpent. Her voice fits better to the firmer tracks. The only track on which Dawn Wagner lends her luring vocals on this CD is the previously unreleased "Winter Furnace Winds". Ashkelon Sain weaves a nebulous web of ingenious ethereal sounds. All kinds of ominous electronic sonances are combined with a considerable array of gloomy guitar tunes. It all seems to fit very logically, the sequence has an agreeable flow. Some hightlights: "Homewrecker" is a perfect shoegaze track: a slow, stately tempo, a texture of blurry, dismal guitars and doleful, aloof vocals. The steady percussion of "Execution of the Stars" in combination with the surging, swirling guitars makes for something fetching. A rendition of the Cocteau Twins' song "When Mama Was Moth" doesn't come as a surprise, Trance to the Sun resembles that band to a significant extend. On "Slave" Zoe Alexandra's voice could even be confused with that of Elizabeth Fraser. "Thistle Lurid" is the most intense track with its thick, harsh guitars and austere vocals. Spiders, Aether & Rain is an excellent summary of the career of this Californian band. For all those who want to get acquinted with their music: this compilation clocks in at nearly eighty minutes, so you are getting value for money. Rating: 8/10 - Nightporter

Trance to the Sun has been recording for various independent labels since the late 80s; this best-of covers the years 1993 through 2001. Led by composer/instrumentalist Ashkelon Sain and various singers, TttS combines the electronics-based goth sound called “darkwave” (a sound pioneered and championed by Projekt) with spacey psychedelia and tinges of world music. Textures range from ethereal and ghostly to harsh and earthy, though the songs always retain melodic strengths and visceral thrills. “Thistle Lurid,” which almost reaches progressive rock scope, is the most impressive tune on a generally impressive collection. -Michael Toland

I've been familiar with the name Trance to the Sun for years; I've seen it among the track lists for compilations and on the set lists from clubs around the world, but I never actually heard their music. Now that I've listened to Spiders, Aether & Rain I feel like an absolute mook for not having checked them out sooner. The underlying basis of Trance to the Sun's music is the heavily-effected guitar tone and haunted female vocals that will be familiar to any aficionado of ethereal goth, but their sound is bolstered by layers of dark psychedelia and more than a bit of sonic experimentation. Difficult to pigeonhole, each track on Spiders, Aether & Rain displays a different side of Trance to the Sun; the subterranean gloom of "Olive the Slut" showcases a completely different set of aesthetic values than the driving, dissonant "Execution of the Stars." All this and a Cocteau Twins cover version. Rating: 4 1/2 stars out of 5. -Jack

The ’90s Goth explosion brought us many exciting bands, and one of the most original, label-defying groups was Trance to the Sun, the brainchild of guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/producer Ashkelon Sain, who was supported by an ever-mutating roster of musicians (including three different singers: Zoe Alexandra Wakefield, Dawn Wagner and Ingrid Blue). The 13 tracks compiled in this collection transport listeners to a surreal plane, with echo, distortion, and feedback drenched guitars, murky bass lines, trippy synths, and eerie female voices swirling in a Dali-esque sonic soup. Simply imbibe these psychedelic, ambient rock creations, from the hypnotic, guitar-free grooves of “Olive the Slut” to the growling intensity of “Execution of the Stars” to the pastoral beauty of the dreamy instrumental “August Rain V.1”. The vocals shimmer, snarl, and seduce; they’re not always comprehensible, but are always emotionally resonant, sometimes akin to a sinister-sounding Cocteau Twins. For the uninitiated, this collection should whet your appetite to explore a band that has sadly disbanded but remains compelling today. -Bryan Reesman

Goth-classic, Trance to the Sun, was one of the essential dream-pop bands of the ‘90s. Fronted by no less than 3 female singers, the band’s official output easily represented the flavour of the ethereal music scene during its tenure if not heavily influencing that period. The band released 7 albums over the span of its life. Trance to the Sun was a project that began with chief visionary, Ashkelon Sain, who played most of the instruments for the band, including guitars, basses, synths, even drum machines.

The 13 tracks found on this compilation of songs were selected by the band’s primary mainstay, Ashkelon Sain, in an effort to not only effectively encompass the complete cycle of the band, but to also provide a distinctive thread of music that highlights the band’s strength and musical passion as well as its historical timeline. From the beginning banshee-like vocals of Zoe Alexandra Wakefield to the darker lost-soul vocals of Ingrid Blue, whose new unicorn painting is the cover of this retrospective, to the interim Dawn Wagner, whose voice is found on only one track, the unreleased “Winter Furnace Winds,” from the unfinished Equinox sessions, Trance to the Sun was a defining darkwave band.

Besides the bonus of the previously unreleased song found on this collection, there is the difficult to find Trance to the Sun cover of Cocteau Twins’ “When Mama Was Moth,” released in 2001. The expressively titled Spiders, Aether, & Rain: The Finest Works of Trance to the Sun is an excellent distribution of songs that takes the most dynamic tracks of their career and reassembles them into a coloring book of emotions. As a soundtrack to that inner unease, that always wet sense of danger and discord, that wispy smoke of insanity, Spiders, Aether, & Rain respects the world of Trance to the Sun while immortalizing their music.

This collection is presented in a Limited Edition digipak and a 12-page booklet that splashes with lots of photos, song information, and an informative liner notes entry by Paul Angelosanto, a Massachusetts based writer/poet with direct acquaintance with Ashkelon Sain. If you’re a dedicated fan, this set seals the fine career of Trance to the Sun, especially with the two rarities within.

Trance to the Sun ceased as an entity in 2001 even as fans refuse to let the band slip away in MySpace pages. Here’s betting for a reunion set down this long, fog-drenched road. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. -Matt Rowe

The lulls present on Trance to the Sun’s career retrospective, “Spiders, Aether & Rain,” are forgivable considering the fact that this band accomplished so much while remaining truly independent, recording seven albums in a home studio and self-releasing half of their work. The band had quirks, but those were part of its overall personality and combined become almost warmly endearing. Some of the songs start out with promise but fail to really go anywhere, which is the danger of working outside pop music’s 3-minute format. The three singers Trance to the Sun worked with over their nine years together are barely distinguishable due to the same vocal effects used for each that seem to have been a consistent and defining characteristic for the band. There’s a sense that the vocals were all recorded in the same long, empty marble corridor with the microphone placed at varying distances from the singers for each song, which can sometimes make the lyrics difficult to understand.

But this is good darkwave, and the music expertly conveys the intended mood of the words. The spacey, distant quality of the vocals round out the mystic atmosphere, and while it would be nice to occasionally hear what those three women really sound like, something definitely would’ve been lost without those effects.

The beats rarely approach complexity, and that simplicity adds an intense element to the album that is paradoxically calming. When the energy builds in a way that reflects Trance to the Sun’s punk and goth influences, the intensity feels just as natural. —Stewart Fuell

Five years after its demise, Trance to the Sun offers this crucial retrospective covering the history of this arcane darkwave cult act.

In many ways, the '90s was the crest of the American gothic music wave; Switchblade Symphony devoured the scene, touring festivals actually existed, and Projekt and Cleopatra reigned like record label royalty... and then there were underground cult legends like Trance to the Sun. Formed in 1990 by Ashkelon Sain, their sound remains quite hard to pinpoint or even compare. Certainly, nodes of the hazy glossolalia of Cocteau Twins are present, the swampy atmosphere of the Switchblade sisters, and even the stark shadows of Bauhaus come to mind when sampling their eclectic tangle. However, their gloom is certainly all their own and thus perhaps through Spiders, Aether, and Rain, one can glean why Projekt exhumed this retrospective more than half a decade after their demise.

Unlike many of the contemporaries, TttS' eclectic sound aims for mystery over acceptability, and while a rainy dreariness is omnipresent, there is a variety within its monochrome shades. "Thistle Lurid" burbles to life, its heart a fluttering and elastic baritone arpeggio. Ensconced in a bank of smoke-machine fog, a flash of guitar fireworks through the gloom, revealing a murmuring bass guitar and brusque militant snare machine. Despite its dirge gait, vocalist Ingrid Blue sneers and snaps through her angry poetry, yet even she finds a bit of harmonic solace in its swaying breezy chorus. Shouldering a steady drum machine click and swish cadence, in "Execution of the Stars," Blue's lyrical accusations resemble the sneers of Christian Death's figurehead Rozz Williams, and with each disenchanted turn of the phrase, depressed bass guitar and clattering drum machine wisps halfheartedly echo her poison. Then there's the sprawling, 10-minute epic, "Spider Planet." As if entranced, Blue lilts questioning and psychedelic to an aloof guitar’s fluid thrum as a percussive ghost faintly scratches at its walls. Amidst its breadth, occasional instrumental movements occur; from acoustic guitar strums to flanged snare comets, they keep it from falling into pure freeform poetry. In terms of atmosphere alone, "August Rain V.1" does a wondrous job at illustrating its title. Brushes graze a drum's face while guitar swirls pensive like an opium den vision. Somewhere in its depths, bass murmurs, overtaken by the brittle grace of sighing synthetic spirits. Finally, TttS are for a moment possessed by The Cocteau Twins for a cover of "When Mama Was Moth." While mirroring the dreamy peculiarities of this venerable act via Blue's unintelligible child-like lilt, its baritone cathedral bell, flat kettle drum rolls, and murderous synth breaks lend the piece enough of TttS' signature drama to render it a rather interesting interpretation.

Surprisingly, despite being fronted by three separate vocalists and written across a decade, Spiders, Aether, and Rain feels more like a solid, varied album than a smattering of archival samples. Certainly, these peculiar and twisted thoughts are more of a challenge than some may accept, but for those aware of their revelation, this compilation will undoubtedly bring back those memories of when gothic music thought itself to be dark and mysterious rather than simple dance or rock music. -Vlad McNeally