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vidnaObmana



Last Updated: 11/17/2009

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Status: Single
City: Antwerpen
Country: BE
Signup Date: 11/16/2005

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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 
vidnaObmana - 1984-1986 Testament of Tape 3LP box-set (Vinyl On Demand)


 

The first of 2 epic vinyl retrospectives covering vidnaObmana's obscure cassette period from 1984 till 1986. This 3LP box-set will be released on the fascinating Vinyl On Demand label. A label responsible for reissuing classic and obscure music from well-respected underground bands like SPK, Severed Heads, Esplendor Geometrico, Maurizio Bianchi and many others.

1984-1986 Testament Of Tape captures vidnaObmana in his most experimental phase, searching for his own musical voice moving through various styles. From utterly relentless noise music to rhythmical industrial outbursts, this 3LP set features unreleased and extremely rare tracks from private collection (a personal friend for whom the music was exclusively recorded) to songs from early cassettes releases.

This essential archival release will be available in the complete 3LP box-set and a 1 LP, now for pre-order at Vinyl On Demand.  Don't miss out on this unique and extremely limited (477 copies in total) collection of early vidnaObmana music !

Sincere gratitude to John Weyden for having preserved all these rare tracks !
6:17 AM 
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 
An album that was in production for a very long time, due to various external reasons beyond the control of the label and vidnaObmana.  Back in 2006/2007 at the end of the vidnaObmana' story, vidnaObmana remixed the Black Box Warning music for a compilation on Plague Recordings.  Now the album is finally available as a free download.


free download

1. Audela - Black Box Warning {23 Black Boxes Mix} (9:12)
2. Maarten van der Vleuten - Black Box Warning {Through The Cracks In The Box Mix} (9:39)
3. Nathan Siter - Black Box Warning {Remix} (8:49)
4. Scanner - Black Box Warning {Remix} (7:59)
5. Sid Redlin - Black Box Warning {Rotary Glass Mix} (4:43)
6. The Caretaker - The Black Box Warning {MSR990 Memories Mix} (7:55)
7. Vidna Obmana - Black Box Warning {Subterranean Plague Mix} (6:23)

Remixes based on source-material taken from the anonymously 'BBW' tracks appearing on May The Plague Be With You.

Planned as a physical release in 2007 but never issued due to administrative entanglements (i.e. Kafkaesque bureaucracies).

All tracks © the individual artists.
This compilation © 2009 Plague Recordings.
All rights reserved.

Thanks to the remixers and all friends of the Plague for their dedication and support.

All compositions come "as is", like they were delivered by the artist (no additional mastering nor engineering).
5:58 AM 
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009 
Dirk Serries, the man behind vidnaObmana and fear falls burning, joined Twitter.  So if you are interested in his abstract thoughts, what he's up to with his various projects and all, follow him at www.twitter.com/dirkserries
6:40 AM 
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Saturday, February 21, 2009 
Projekt has just released and reissued two of their acclaimed collaborations as 2CD set.  Spirit Dome/Live Archive is the 5th and 6th collaboration of vidnaObmana and Steve Roach.  Now available through Projekt Records.




Spirit Dome returns with a perfect companion, Live Archive. Two out-of-print releases from this acclaimed ambient duo are brought together in this value-priced 2-CD release. Living proof of the power of live performance, these recordings are so immediate and engaging it would be easy to assume they were crafted over months in the studio. Live Archive, from their 1997 tour, serves as a natural complement to 2004's Spirit Dome, recorded live to stereo master in one take in a studio-like environment.
Steve Roach / vidnaObmana's 2002 CD InnerZone served as the doorway to the surreal environment explored on Spirit Dome. Recorded in one continuous 74 minute session in a hotel room in Philadelphia, this is a dark sanctuary of pure texture and beautiful, if foreboding, dissonance pulled along with pulsing beats, subtle loops and dense soundworlds.The track captures a chilling gothic ambience that offers the exploration of remote psychological states of awareness. This is achieved by way of extensive live processing of instruments including fujara (overtone flute), guitar, and the seemingly bottomless wellspring of electro-acoustic sounds found only in the soundscapes of the duo.
Live Archive, on the other hand, collects peak performance moments of pure energy and emotion from the duo's live adventures. The wide range of venues, traveling to various countries, and above all their first tour together fueled their mutual intentions, challenging the artists to create music that does not know the limits of jet lag, equipment failures, and physical demands which occur when leaving the sanctuary of the studio.

10:40 AM 
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009 
Last Saturday Mexican artist and multi-instrumentalist Jorge Reyes died from an apparant heart attack. Jorge, whom I met through Steve Roach, continued to amaze, inspire and provoke me when I was exploring the boundaries between fourth world and ambient music at a moment in my life when everything was possible nothing permitted.
In deep respect,

Dirk,
vidnaObmana.

For more news on Jorge, visit Steve Roach's site : www.steveroach.com
6:55 AM 
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Monday, September 15, 2008 

In the light of the forthcoming 8lp tour-de-force on tonefloat, the label has set up a nice mail-order for all available vidnaObmana cds.  Visit the store here

 

12:14 PM 
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Wednesday, January 30, 2008 

from the tonefloat headquarters :

"saving for your xmas present starts now with a piece of art that dirk serries and tonefloat are already working on, that is scheduled for december: a definite vidna obmana retrospective, vidna obmana - 1987-2007: chasing the odyssee on vinyl. starting out as a collection of one or maybe two albums, we decided to get it done properly. the result will be an eight (!) record set, to include a selection of vidna obmana's best recordings over those two decades, as well as some exclusive bonus material."

we'll bring you up to date on the final selection, sequence and packaging of this epic 8lp box-set as soon as possible.

scheduled for release : May 2009

8:15 AM 
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Sunday, January 06, 2008 

First of all my sincere wishes to all of you out there for 2008, may it be a healthy, happy and peaceful new year !

It's with great pleasure that I can already tell you that the future will hold some very nice surprises.  In the upcoming months I'll work on a vinyl retrospective which will cover my entire 20-year oeuvre, including some of very obscure and unreleased material.  It's still a bit early to tell you more about the labels involved but I can already tell you it's going to be beautiful and monumental.

Keeping you posted throughout 2008 !

vidnaObmana, January 2008.

 

 

10:34 AM 
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Tuesday, July 10, 2007 
"vidnaObmana, don of the harmonic arcing loop, has moved around variously over the years, building up a largely coherent oeuvre between harsher post-industrial electronics, isolationist ambient drone, tribal minimalist and post-classical soundworlds. With the completion of this cumulative 4-CD Opera project, Dirk Serries has placed the vidnaObmana "brand" in suspension after 23 years of endeavour. An Opera for Four Fusion Works represents for his more harmonic and recycled tendencies what the parallel recently concluded Dante trilogy did for his more tribal and industrial facets. Over four "Acts", VO "recycles" the sound sources of a different musician or group, linking them thematically.

Act I: Echoes of Steel features guitar recordings by Dreams In Exile, and continues in the earlier consonant harmonic vein of Landscape in Obscurity, but with guitar-based raw material. "IV" begins with clearly finger-picked chords relatively untampered with, till about eight minutes in when a familiar "removal" takes place and a more ethereal layering of textures loops out, decays being extended and timbres stretched and outfolded into medieval-sounding cascades of rippling glissandi. The overall concept is artfully realized so as to allow the guitar to return to unaltered state by the end. A largely pastoral oneiric mood of pacific cascades ensues, marred only by "III"'s throwing up of some irksome wispy wordless vocals. "II" recovers the mood, more submerged, exploring the sound stage through judicious panning. Eventually an atmosphere of mystic glaze descends, a mood and dynamic of undulant pluck-drift recalling Alio Die's psaltery-based contemplations with Saffron Wood on last year's Corteggiando le Messi.

On Act II: Phrasing the Air, VO's electronics, guitars, bowed strings and infinite recycling are deployed in tandem with Bill Fox's soprano sax, the latter being mostly stretched into a seamless smear. On "I" the sax is drawn out into a slowed-down Hassell-esque hoon, like a musicized foghorn whooping weirdly over a desolate landscape. "II" recalls VO's early work on Revealed by Composed Nature, a simple looping melodic pattern, into which the sax slides, while Obmana's ebow makes passing swoops above the recyclings. Overall, this Act makes for less than easy listening, but is by no means avant harsh. "VI" acts a little Riley-esque, close to classical minimalism, with low middle and high sax loops shifting and interweaving. As it progresses, further soundmulch is added, creating an ominous undertone of post-industrial neo-gothica. "V" returns to ambient semi-quietude, the sax being processed down to smoky curlicues, bendy low-end guitar accentuating the wooze, as an eerie foggy feel pervades. The dissonant drift continues on to the final "IV," a recurring warped theme gradually bolstered by somewhat bilious drones. Peculiar, challenging, and quite far removed from lighter, airier "popular" works like River of Appearance.

Morton Feldman, in a commentary on his earliest post-Cagean compositions, stated: "Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves - not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with." His stated desire was to penetrate beneath and beyond the perceived historical obstructions to hearing, arriving unencumbered at the origins of unmediated sound, into the very heart of its sonorous matter. Act III: Reflections on Scale is dedicated to Feldman's memory, and his "proto-minimalist" spirit is palpable on this the most desolate, introspective and thematic of all these four works. VO's admiration for Feldman is underlined by his choice of New York experimentalist Kenneth Kirschner, composer of indeterminate music in the tradition of Feldman. His "unfixed" piano patterns provide the sparest recycling matter yet, to which VO responds with the lightest of recycling touches, subtly suffusing the most minimal of piano motifs with a few crackles, a spare guitar chord, and softly droning controlled feedback. Four sombre forays into stasis, spatiality, and the sustainability of sustain are the outcome, the endlessnessism of the enterprise managing to assist in getting close to the Feldmanesque vision of being inside sonority.

Act IV: The Bowing Harmony utilizes the voice of Steven Wilson (of Bass Communion and Porcupine Tree reknown). It starts off, on "II," with Wilson singing in a Buckley-esque semi-falsetto style - very much a naked voice, slowly getting progressively more "dressed". On "IV," it's still recognizablely a human voice, but progressively transformed through more and more vox-loops making similar downward swoops into a vortex, underpinned by an insistent descending three-note bass figure. Sundry reverberant drift trails circulate, the fall-out from multi-variate recyclings. A strange, almost exotic, atmosphere of soft cacophany ensues. "VI" is the shortest (3:57), most conventional, and most enjoyable track, creating a gorgeous chord progression from a compacting of the vocal into a virtual keyboard, faraway but brought so close through massive reverberation, acquiring a nice undergirding of resonant buzzdrone along the way. By final track "VI" the sound has unmoored itself completely from all association with voice, and stretches itself out into a by now familar (but no less appealing for a' that) lilting arcing Obmana darkwave-ambient melancholia. Twenty-plus minutes of oozing almost Moorish ambiance ensue, invoking visions of Herzog's "Aguirre", beyond Popol Vuh, on a befogged riverdrift into elsewhere, discreet ebow guitar tendrils snaking up into a strange sibilance of wheezes and creaks. It's an ending that is entirely consonant with an illustrious past while drawing all elements into a still resounding present, doing full justice to his status as a distinguished elder statesman of modern experimental ambient." E/I magazine
12:01 PM 
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007 

With the completion of the Opera For Four Fusion Works box-set, vidnaObmana ends his story in beauty.

"With "The bowing harmony" (act IV of Opera) I established my last vidna recording in the studio and I'm truly happy I can conclude the vidnaObmana saga with this album. The Opera project has been, along with my Dante trilogy, the most rewarding and creatively satisfying studio recordings I've ever done and if I could choose, it's this Opera for Four Fusion Works and the Dante trilogy (Tremor, Spore and Legacy) I would like to be remembered for. Both works are a culmulation of all the experience and musical surface I explored over these past 23 years... What the Dante trilogy is for my rhythmical, tribal and more industrial face, the Opera has the main representative for my most harmonic and fascination for recycling... Thank you all." vidnaObmana April 2007.

5:03 AM 
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