Kinetic - St Johns Ambient Society / Ajuca

Sunfish have graced the stages of many a free festival, and make a likeable blend of crusty-trance that’s half medicine drum and half missing link between Ozric Tentacles and psytrance. They hail from that peculiar, nonspecific part of the south west UK simply termed The West Country – a wonderful and switched-on place where I grew up, synonymous with toothless village idiots, strange druidic sites, organic post-celtic live music, "real" "ale", Glastonbury and potent milky cider with curious psychedelic and meta-alcoholic properties. It comes without surprise then that Sunfish’s sound brings in dub, trance, folk and live guitars (that only occasionally veer into realms of wankiness normally inhabited by Spinal Tap or a less agile Steve Vai.) Their pitched-down morning trance moments are sublime, their danceable digidub is reminiscent of alcoholic afternoons at free festivals, and the megadog synth lines are like the early ambient dance crossovers of ten years ago. In fact, there’s a certain 1992-ness to it all... think Feed Your Head, thing Transglobal Underground, think Astralasia, and you’re halfway there. Sometimes it just doesn’t work – and sometimes it’s awful – but sometimes everything slots together perfectly and sounds perfect in its own honest, straightforward way. Most odd of all, the album closes with a right royal knees-up, one of the most psychedelic and – dare I say it – "Goan" trancers in a long time with soaring melodies, mental drums and cheeky samples thrown in. Not an amazing album then – but quirky, smelly, pleasant stuff that’s a nice indie-friendly dose of alternative free festival trance.