artist: Vidna Obmana country of origin: Belgium style(s): Ambient, environmental, avant-garde essential releases: Ending Mirage (1992, ND Records/Projekt) Soundtrack To The Aquarium (1993, Hypnos) The River Of Appearance (1996, Projekt) Crossing The Trail (1998, Projekt)

In the more muted, introspective and minimalist areas of the ambient zone Vidna Obmana (real name Dirk Serries) is a presence to be reckoned with. If you like the cerebral electro-acoustic soundscapes of American artists like Steve Roach and Robert Rich, Obmana's solo albums and collaborations have a similar appeal. His music traverses industrial noise, lovely Eno-esque minimalism, environmental music, dark tribal ambience and ghostly extended drones. Many fans and even the composer himself on occasion have pointed to the "personal" nature of his music but that's actually not a very helpful word. How can music produced by intelligent humans be anything but? Perhaps "emotional" is a better term, given that his themes are sometimes introspective musings on love, sorrow and grief rather than impressions of external environments. I can recommend a handful of creative highpoints for newcomers; beyond that is a massive catalogue of releases to explore.

His early 90's music is a bit like a collection of static paintings, with each piece being a separate room, and the only real movement being the viewer slowly entering, looking at the picture, and then exiting the space. Containing very little actual development within each track, this fascinating music is formed from abstract, morphing layers of drones that cluster and separate in slow-motion, existing in a space somewhere between tonal and atonal. Of these early albums Ending Mirage and Soundtrack To The Aquarium have the most shape to them and are a good place to start for fans of the style.

Obmana's work from the mid-90's onwards offers greater diversity. Tribal experiments are common, and so are warmer sounds where the strands coalesce into something resembling major and minor chords. The masterful and generally beatless River Of Appearance is based around those familiar slow arcs and clusters of yore but now with a richer and more tonal sound. Obmana's enveloping widescreen strings are joined in places by ghostly flute, tentative piano figures or tinkling bell-like tones. It's a mystic, tender and deeply trance-inducing album that ranks alongside Steve Roach's Dreamtime Return (1989) and Biosphere's Substrata (1997) as one of the great ambient moments of the late 20th Century. Crossing The Trail emphasises the tribal side of this richer sound. It's more in the environmental mould, laden with delicate location sounds from nature and a myriad of slow percussive grooves that suggest mysterious ritual without resorting to spiritual overtones. Roach and Rich may have got there first but Crossing The Trail is a fine example of the form.

There's also plenty of darker tribal ambient in composer's repetoire, a sub-genre which I generally find too oppressive and grim. Although I can't recommend these personally, dark ambient fans highly regard the Steve Roach collaboration Well Of Souls (1995) as well as The Spiritual Bonding (1994) and the Dante-inspired horrors of Spore (2003). Vidna Obmana compilation albums are many and often contain previously unreleased material. None are truly representative - for an artist as prolific as this how could they be - so be sure you check some of his classics first.

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