Vidna Obmana

"If you wonder how deep the vaults of Vidna Obmana are, I have the same question. I’ve known Dirk Serries, also known as Vidna Obmana, since the first day he started as a short-lived noise project, and now, 40 years later, he surprises me with yet another triple CD of music, comprising 16 long pieces recorded from 1995 to 2002; only four of these have been released, three on compilation CDs and one on a very limited 7″. I heard one of these four, so, for all I know, all the stuff I never heard before. By the mid-1990s, Serries had a clear vision of what Vidna Obmana should sound like, utilising “Atmospheres, various flutes, overtone flutes, percussion, rhythm programming, dreampipes, recycling, and abstract mutations, as well as voices,” and expanding on these ideas.

Massive, sustaining ambient pieces, long flowing paths, lots of sound effects, processing those acoustic sounds. Sometimes there’s a bit of tribalist rhythm, nothing too much in your face, except for the first part of ‘Recoils In Anger I & II”, which is something of a distraction, but working very well as a counterpart for the rest of the album. The use of voice in ‘Shaking The Surreal’ is something I haven’t heard before in Vidna Obmana’s music, but maybe I simply forgot.

Otherwise, it is a very coherent collection of very typical Vidna Obmana pieces. I am wondering why they have not been released. They are as good as any from that time, and I can imagine a well-known name like Vidna Obmana being swamped with requests for a compilation track in those years (the compilation as the starting point for any new label). After three solid hours of musical head spacing, that’s one question I had, the other being: how deep are these vaults? What’s more to come? How many more 3CD sets can we expect – you may not find the answer in Vital Weekly, as Vidna Obmana outlives us." - Vitaly Week Review