Vidna Obmana - Ambient Noise

Belgian musician Dirk Serries took his first steps as a musician in the European industrial scene of the mid-'80s. The first of many artistic collaborations was with noise artist Philip B. Klinger, better known as PBK. After spending several years building a name for himself in the European eso-industrial circles, vidnaObmana had a change of faith and, struck by the records of Brian Eno, began a new career devoted to ambient music. It would take almost twenty years for Dirk Serries to reopen those old drawers and pull out some tracks from his industrial repertoire. In the early '90s, vidnaObmana met Sam Rosenthal (Black Tape For A Blue Girl) and Steve Roach, the most charismatic musician of the entire post-Brian Eno electronic scene. There have been many other important collaborations in the Belgian musician's career (Asmus Tietchens, Djen Ajakan Shean, Jeff Pearce, Alio Die and others), but the one with Roach is certainly the most fruitful.

At the end of a long journey that has seen vidnaObmana engage with various areas of electroacoustic music, the time may have come for recognition beyond the niche of devotees who have followed him all along. On his latest album, Legacy, the presence of electric guitar from a rock guru like Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), hints at new horizons.

First phase: from darkness to light (1988-1994)

The works from this first phase of vidnaObmana's career (when he still went by Vidna Obmana) are built using analog synthesizers and a digital workstation: the music becomes more melancholic and atmospheric.

The four works originally released on cassette (see discography alongside) and later reissued on CD by Projekt in the two volumes Memories Compiled, are a hymn to desolation. "Exhaust Dark Crown", from Monument Of Empty Colours, opens with a slow, dark circular sound reminiscent of Jon Hassell's ambient records. "Door Of Secret Rising" is as grim and dark as an ocean wave at night. "Isolation/Refuge" colors an ecstasy of beauty with angelic synthesizer tones.

In the following Gathering In Frozen Beauty too, it's the subtle play of light and shadow that hypnotizes the listener. "Before Mutual Grace" captivates the senses with an anaerobic melody worthy of the best Brian Eno and a circular loop that holds the neurons hostage. "Upon Steel Heaven" ventures a celestial choir immersed among hazy industrial passages, and "Reflecting Deep Stars" evokes the space-ambient of Eno and Lanois's "Apollo".

On Near The Flogging Landscape the desolation of earlier works seems to have given way, in part, to meditation and contemplation ("Between Changing Gloom", "Uncertain flow"). The gentle synthesizer melody of "Cocealed" leads into the new-age watercolor of "In Winter Calm". The suspended liquidity of the closing tracks, "In Wired Dreaming" and "Above The Yellow Earth", anticipate the atmospheres of the masterpieces vidnaObmana would record a few years later.

The Belgian composer's ideas seem to take a more defined shape on his first LP, Revealed By Composed Nature, which contains one of the finest compositions in vidnaObmana's entire discography, the wonderful "Out From The Garden Reminded". The track is built on an enchanting drone embroidered with acoustic guitar arpeggios: the effect is the same as a Proustian madeleine, bringing back memories of a lifetime. The last cassette, Refined On Gentle Clouds, presents an artist reborn from the ashes of industrial society, who has found peace in the depths of thought. The technology used to record these tracks gives the sound a grainy, fascinating quality, as if Time itself had somehow been trapped in these pieces of magnetic tape ("In Hollow Embraced", "Float Through Nights", "Nearly Constant", "Over Clouds").

The masterpiece of this first phase of vidnaObmana's artistic life is the Ambient Trilogy. The experiments of the past are now distant memories, and vidnaObmana defines a new modus operandi, building the harmonies of his compositions out of samples. On Passage In Beauty, a single Korg M1 synthesizer is all he needs to recount the beauty found behind the doors of perception. The music is introspective, calm and dreamlike ("Shaped Like Tears", "Bright Fall", "Passage In Beauty"), and should be listened to on headphones, at a not overly loud volume, to be appreciated in all its nuances. The second chapter of the trilogy, Shadowing In Sorrow, marks another step for the Belgian musician on the path to perfection: the tracks often begin quietly and then grow in power, while the loops overlap in circular motions. Most of the compositions thrive on the simplicity of synthesizer melodies, while layers of harmonics shimmer in the background ("One Charming Delight", "Of Great Constancy").

Ending Mirage opens with "Siren", a mantra that seems to pay homage to Florian Fricke's Popol Vuh. The second track, "Mellow At Heart", marks another masterpiece in vidnaObmana's vast output: a poignant melody slowly builds over layers of overlapping samples in a moving crescendo. The dramatic intensity of Klaus Schulze and the elegant romanticism of Harold Budd will never find a more compelling synthesis than this. The track's reprise, featuring Yasnaia's voice, is simply breathtaking. The watery qualities of the lengthy "Luxurious Fragments" mark an unsurpassed high point of post-industrial isolationism.

Meanwhile, Dirk Serries makes his first overseas contacts, collaborating "remotely" with the deus ex machina of Black Tape For A Blue Girl, Sam Rosenthal. The result of this exchange is the beautiful Terrace Of Memories, containing five light, floating drones like flower petals swept by the wind, with Susan Jenning's voice embodying melancholy reincarnated as a young girl. Completely different is his collaboration with industrial underground legend Asmus Tietchens, whose interests have always lain in exploring the darker side of sound. Asmus Tietchens/ Vidna Obmana contains three versions of "vot", dense agglomerations of urban fog and bell sounds, plus two solo tracks, one for each artist. In 1999 another collaboration between the two musicians would follow, Motives For Recycling, containing the sequel to their first collaboration ("Vot4", "Vot5", "Vot6"), along with a reworking of Tietchens' first masterpiece, "Nachtstücke (1975-1978)". Another collaboration closes this hypothetical first phase of vidnaObmana's career. It's a work commissioned by the Antwerp Zoo Aquarium in Belgium. Soundtrack For The Aquarium contains five vidnaObmana tracks for a work of strong evocative power, created together with the masters of Belgian ritual music, Hybryds. In 2001 the work would be reissued by Hypnos, without Hybryds' contribution, but including the tracks originally released on Still Fragments as well as an entire extra live CD.

Second phase: ritual music (1995-1998)

Thanks to the success of the ambient trilogy (all three CDs went out of print in no time), vidnaObmana manages to break into America. The Californian musicians who are rewriting the dictionary of electronic music — Michael Stearns, Steve Roach and Robert Rich — immediately notice Serries' talent. The airy structures of the Belgian's latest masterpieces are gradually set aside, and rhythm becomes an essential aspect of the new compositions. The refined minimalism of his early works soon gives way to increasingly complex structures, closer, in fact, to the ritual drift of Roach's and Stearns' music.

The first step towards this new world is a transitional work, Echoing Delight, in which Djen Ajakan Shean's percussion still struggles to find the best dialogue with vidnaObmana's electronic layers. It's the abysses drawn by the synthesizers that mark the album's best moments ("Winter Movement"). In 2001 Projekt would reissue this work as a double CD titled "Subterranean Collective", together with "Parallel Flaming" and "The Spiritual Bonding".

In the liner notes of the following Still Fragments, Vidna Obmana recounts his new interest in live performance. The album gathers two excerpts from as many concerts held during the summer of 1993. In the first, percussionist Djen Ajakan Shean accompanies Serries in a reinterpretation of some themes from Echoing Delight and Parallel Flaming, and the result surpasses the studio versions. In the second part, Vidna Obmana performs solo, in a concert commissioned by Antwerp Zoo "in respect of life in the seas". On Parallel Flaming the studio collaboration with percussionist Djen Ajakan Shean continues. Acoustic sounds multiply (udu, shakers, maracas, chimes, rainmaker, didgeridoo, flute, etc.), while the electronics float deep and enveloping around the percussion rhythms: the music has become tribal.

A veritable all-star parade graces the first truly notable work of this new era, The Spiritual Bonding: from Steve Roach ("Earth Dangling", "The Spiritual Bonding") to Robert Rich ("The Interior Journey", "From The Stepping Stone"), from Alio Die ("The Nebulous Pathway") to Djen Ajakan Shean ("Spatial Prophecy"). The music draws its strength from the meeting of opposite elements: digital workstations and ancestral percussion; cold, dark, cloudy urban landscapes set against vast waterless desert expanses. Steve Roach opens the doors of his studio in the Arizona desert and shows vidnaObmana the depths of space and time: the Belgian's music will never be the same again. Proof of this comes with the mini CD The Transcending Quest, containing 20 minutes of stellar music: vidnaObmana has by now clearly entered the pantheon of the gods. This track was included on Projekt's "Amplexus" CD, also released in 1995.

The Belgian musician's state of grace is demonstrated by his first collaboration with Steve Roach, Well Of Souls: a monumental work, spread across two CDs full of magnetic, gripping music. The compositions lack any set structure, as per the trance playbook: beginning and end don't matter, only the means of reaching the doors of perception. The mystic Roach and the melancholic Serries find common ground in painting the mystery surrounding life. Percussion and workstations work together to create a sonic fabric that is seductive ("In The Presence Of Something"), tribal ("In The Realm Of Twilight", "The Gathering") and cosmic ("Deep Hours"). With the following The River Of Appearance, vidnaObmana takes a step "back", writing another fundamental chapter in the history of ambient music. The formula radiated by the elegance of the Harold Budd and Brian Eno collaborations finds a crystallization in this album. The percussive element is reduced to a minimum ("Ephemeral Vision"), and the most evocative scenarios ("The Angelic Appearance", "A Scenic Fall") stem from the magic of layered synthesizer sounds. There's nowhere further to go from here: a change of course is needed. Twilight Of Perception is a collection of tracks that appeared on various compilations ("Twilight Earth", "Arcana Coelestia", "Objekt5", "Ambient Nation, vol.2", "Of Sound Mind") plus a couple of unreleased pieces.

The second collaboration with Steve Roach, Cavern Of Sirens, opens with the deep chant of Tibetan monk Pema Lama, prominently featured on the lengthy "Ascension For Protection". The infinite abysses of the electronics and the psychedelia of the percussive structures plunge the listener into a parallel dimension ("Hidden Earth And The Shadows Dance", "The Current Below"). Roger King's electric guitars help paint the tribal scenery on the lengthy "Middle World Passage".

The path is now set, and the following solo work, Crossing The Trail, too lingers on the trails of tribal-ambient, building shimmering interlocking patterns out of synthesizer layers and liquid percussion. The best episodes are the one with Steve Roach ("Trail Dwelling") and the one with guitarist Jeff Pearce ("The Splendid Place"): this latter collaboration marks a return to the splendor of the Ambient Trilogy, and at the same time the start of the experimental phase of vidnaObmana's career. The third, mammoth collaboration with Steve Roach, Ascension Of Shadows, adds little to the works just described: the work is spread across three discs, released in a limited edition (now out of print). Each CD contains a single long composition, three long drones in all that expand one's perception of space and time. More fascinating is the Live Archive, which contains material assembled in the studio by Steve Roach from recordings of the tour that vidnaObmana and Roach himself held in the United States and Europe during 1997.

Third phase: experimentation (1999-2003)

From the pantheon of ambient music, vidnaObmana comes down to earth to broaden his horizons.

Within a couple of years the Belgian musician found himself playing with very different musicians, and in fields that were not only electronic. The first of this series of collaborations is with Italians Capriolo Trifoglio and Diego Borotti on the album released on Hypnos, Landscapes In Obscurity: the electronics turn cold and glacial while the Italians' saxophone and flute sketch out desolate wastelands. More experimental is The Shape Of Solitude, a collaboration with guitarist Serge Devadder, which pushes vidnaObmana's music down previously unexplored paths. The deep atmospheres built on synthesizer act as a container for Devadder's guitars, which appear now as mere ghostly brushstrokes ("When A Dead Tree Sings"), now hazy and biting ("The Plain Truth"), now completely transformed into something else entirely ("Leaving This Place Again"). More descriptive is the guitar of Jeff Pearce, vidnaObmana's new collaborator on the unmissable True Stories. The two musicians seem to follow the same guidelines, whether wandering through infinite space ("Wander") or letting themselves drift into oceans of desolation ("Horizon Of Thought"). The twelve pieces on the record never exceed eight minutes, which makes True Stories a recommended listen for anyone approaching this kind of music for the first time. The album opens with a beautiful track taken from the sessions recorded with Serge Devadder ("Opening theme"). A collaboration between Serries and Stefano Musso was inevitable.

On Echo Passage, Alio Die's nature sounds blend perfectly with the imaginary settings of which vidnaObmana has become the absolute master of ceremonies. Yet another change of partner for the following record, Spirits, in which the exotic percussion sounds of Belgian musician Jan Marmenout push beyond the tribal scenarios of the collaborations with Steve Roach. The atmospheres bring to mind ancestral rites ("Ceremonial", "The Sacred Balance"). The percussion is often left alone to converse with the electronics, almost on tiptoe ("Travelling Moon").

Among vidnaObmana's most ambitious projects we must certainly also count Variations For Organ, Keyboards and Processor. Willem Tanke composed the organ piece "Tao of Physics" drawing inspiration from a 1975 book by Fritjof Capra, which aimed to highlight certain similarities between the discoveries of quantum physics and Eastern mystical traditions. Tanke then handed the recordings of the piece over to vidnaObmana for post-production. Serries did much more than that, upending the concepts of "sound cleanliness" and "sonic environment": some noises were stretched and amplified, others became part of the sonic fabric itself, so as to make the organ sounds harmonize with the recording environment.

vidnaObmana's fascination with avant-garde music never made him forget the beauty of melancholic, atmospheric sounds. Only the final part of Opera For Four Fusion Works-Act One: Echoes Of Steel (the first of four "acts") lingers on dark, desolate atmospheres; the rest of the work, on the contrary, is enlivened by the gentle sounds of the acoustic and electric guitars of the Portland duo Dreams In Exile. On the second chapter too, Opera For Four Fusion Works-Act Two: Phrasing The Air, vidnaObmana seems to want to linger on bucolic themes now far removed from his usual music. Listening to "I" and "II" brings to mind the masterpieces of the Belgian musician's early career, Revelead By Composed Nature and Ending Mirage. Bill Fox's saxophone often recalls the depths of Stuart Dempster (Deep Listening band).

The result of the collaboration Serries undertook with Belgian double bass player Joris de Backer is astonishing: Principle Of Silence-Live is an album containing the real-time recordings (with no overdubs) of the concert held at the Capella di Teobaldo in Brecht, Belgium, on 21 December 2002. Never before had vidnaObmana's experimentation pushed so deeply into musical territory, and the result is stunning: Backer's nervous double bass lines are heightened by the atmospheres created by Serries, who follows the twisted harmonies with an electric guitar and several fujaras.

Fourth phase: a return to darkness (2000-2004)

vidnaObmana's research has never stopped for a moment, and will most likely continue in the future too. But in the early years of the new millennium the musician's attention settled on a handful of particular timbres: the ultrasonic tones of a flute, the sinister breaths of a vujara, the distorted notes of an e-bow, the dry depths of a double bass. These and other sounds are what the Belgian artist focused on to produce a series of dense, magmatic albums that led him to brush up against the borders of psychedelic rock.

The new direction is marked by a transitional album, The Surreal Sanctuary, where one can already sense electronics as tense and dark as they hadn't been in years: the experiments of his latest works pushed vidnaObmana's music to confront earthly tensions. Serries plays electric guitar and bass, and the celestial paradises of a few records back now seem light years away. This idea is brought into focus on the following The Contemporary Nocturne, which is the "B-side" of the previous album: it's animated by the same electric, nocturnal, uncertain atmosphere. Layers of harmonics condense beneath overtones of processed flute, transformed into a fanfare for the kingdom of the dead. It's the sounds of the fujara and the e-bow that turn vidnaObmana's electronics into an infernal mantra. Jim Cole, Joris de Backer and Steve Roach all contribute to the endeavor.

The leap into the underworld comes with the first chapter of the trilogy inspired by Dante's Inferno, Tremor, which follows on from the developments of the last two Hypnos releases. This time vidnaObmana works alone, but the atmospheres are once again built on the sounds of various fujaras, flute overtones, e-bow harmonics, and on the reconstruction and mutation of visions had in the past. The tense atmosphere of the opening "Moedra", torn apart by an electric guitar, flows seamlessly into the tribal dance of "Flesh Reaper". The journey continues for 70 minutes, down into the abysses of solitude ("The Bleak Inferno"). Even the fourth studio collaboration with Steve Roach, InnerZone, bears the mark of the dark developments in vidnaObmana's music: there are many sound sources, but they are so out of phase, sampled and chopped up in their presentation that it's hard even to recognize them. The deep abysses of Roach's electronics bring to mind the tales of Poe, and the atmosphere remains deeply tribal, even though the meaning behind these dances is anything but reassuring. The second part of the Dante-inspired trilogy, Spore, opens with a hallucinatory electric distortion ("Through The Collective Pain"), something that wouldn't be out of place on a Nine Inch Nails record. Rivers of electric guitars flood the desolate landscape described in "The Humanity Underneath". Marc Verhaeghen of Klinik appears on trumpet on the very long closing track "Resonant Gore". The circle is about to close: vidnaObmana is rediscovering his past, drawing back closer to an industrial aesthetic.

The return to darkness could not have been celebrated more sumptuously than with a collaboration with a true legend of industrial experimentation, Arcane Device (David Lee Myers). Tracers contains eight tracks that flow into one another seamlessly, layering vidnaObmana's atmospheric elements (from the ethereal to the infernal) over Myers' dense metallic strata of sound and feedback. It's remarkable how just a few hours were enough for vidnaObmana and Steve Roach to record their sixth collaboration, Spirit Dome, essentially live, in a hotel room in Philadelphia. A single track of over 70 minutes that unites the terrifying depths of Steve Roach's abysses with the dark sounds (fujara, overtone flute, e-bow) that have by now become characteristic of vidnaObmana's recent work. The gothic, urban atmosphere that pervades Spirit Dome is the swan song of post-industrial society (both Serries and Roach have for years lived far from any urban center).

The circle has closed: vidnaObmana has finally decided to release part of his early industrial work in a compilation, Anthology 1984-2004. It was his most recent albums inspired by Dante's Inferno that made him change his mind: Tremor and Spore are noise-driven albums, where the sonic dynamics don't play out entirely along the lines of isolationism and ambient, but on the contrary are often built on powerful electric distortions forming the rhythmic fabric of the tracks. Only five gems have been pulled out of the drawer: borderlands between post-industrial debris ("Darkness Overpowers It All", "Only Fear Will Survive"), isolationist worlds ("Second Praise For Last Hope"), noise pure and simple ("Ecstasy") and ecstatic visions of other worlds ("Arterial").

The final part of the trilogy inspired by Dante's Inferno, Legacy, can be seen as the first chapter of a new, more electric phase. No longer electronic pure and simple, but a crossover that isn't afraid to get its hands dirty with rock. "Legacy" oozes carnality from every angle: from Steve Von Till's cavernous voice on the opening "Canto" — as he recites the verses of Canto XXVII of Dante's Inferno — to the obsessive drum rhythm of "Blooshift"; from Paul Van Der Berg's treated, recycled guitars to Steven Wilson's long, beautiful solo on the closing "Legacy". The third part of the Dante-inspired trilogy is the most substantial of the three, another masterpiece in vidnaObmana's extremely dense discography.

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