sugar plant / trance mellow 2018 Remaster Limited Edition CD

Originally released in 1996 and newly remastered in 2018, trance mellow stands as one of sugar plant’s most distinctive and forward-looking works. Since the 1990s, the band have continuously blurred the boundaries between indie rock, ambient, post-rock, deep house, and experimental pop. Among their catalog, trance mellow is the album that comes closest to the dance floor—without ever abandoning the band’s signature sense of intimacy and mellowness.

The year 1996 marked a turning point for Japan’s underground dance culture, symbolized by the emergence of the rave movement around events such as RAINBOW 2000. Immersed in this moment, the members of sugar plant encountered new values and sounds firsthand. Around the same time, they recorded after after hours in the United States, where ambient and chill-out elements were already being subtly woven into their band-oriented sound.

With trance mellow, that approach was taken a step further. Gentle, looping rhythms intertwine with overlapping melodic phrases, all placed within a spacious, immersive sonic architecture. The album preserves the sense of mellowness sugar plant had pursued since their debut, while allowing repetition, atmosphere, and texture to take on a more central role.

The record embraces a wide spectrum of influences, from the chill-out aesthetics associated with Cafe del Mar to the ethereal beauty of Cocteau Twins and Slowdive. Notably, the closing track “meadow” serves as a homage to contemporary classical composer Gavin Bryars, echoing the quiet gravity of his seminal work The Sinking of the Titanic.

trance mellow remains a quietly ambitious album—one that captures a fleeting historical moment while sounding uncannily timeless, revealing sugar plant as artists equally attuned to the dance floor, the listening room, and the emotional space in between.