PINNACLE OF COIL

Ascoil Sun is a relatively young group that emerged from Finland within the past couple of years, but their sound is of classic psy-trance and psybient with vague ethnic influences not unlike popular UK group Shpongle as well as including the wildly druggy sounding guitar with heavy delay similar to the most recent Ozric Tentacles albums. Besides this, Pinnacle of Coil is a very modern sounding album, having a very thick production and almost anti-retro sounding synths.

Whereas a lot of progressive electronic music tends to invoke boredom in listeners who are not already into that type of music, Pinnacle of Coil is so active with various psychedelic guitar and effects that it is sure to appeal to most fans of progressive psychedelic rock as long as they don't have an aversion to electronic-based music in the first place. Fortunately, along with the guitar and synth, there are plenty of ethnic/tribal percussion, wind instruments, piano, and very thick bass grooves -- there is plenty here for fans of organic instrumentation and elitist musicians.

The track lengths are very manageable, not passing the 9-minute mark. The individual compositions themselves are more song-oriented than the epic-length primitive Berlin school synth explorations. Laying Pinnacle of Coil beside a modern day symphonic progressive rock album (like The Sum of No Evil by The Flower Kings) and a modern spacy psychedelic progressive rock album (I'll say Ozric Tentacles' Paper Monkeys), this album fits right in with the crowd.

Even though this album has an interesting psy-trance type of sound infused with psychedelic rock guitar and ethnic influences, and the listening experience is densely packed with aural wonder, it has failed to make a lasting impression on me. No individual tracks seem to stand out among the bunch, and the only thing that really sticks out and makes the music worthwhile is the wonderfully thick bass grooves (really, those bass grooves are phat). I can imagine that seeing this duo live at a jam-oriented festival featuring the likes of Phish and Umphrey's McGee would be more entertaining than listening to this album, but I maintain that any fan of instrumental psychedelic jam music would probably love this album, so I recommend Pinnacle of Coil album to them.

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