Product Description
- Encountering Terrain 8’13”
- Trail Dwelling 10’55”
- Forest Arrow 8’59”
- Mission Ground 10’19”
- The Esoteric Source 7’51”
- The Giant Traveller 8’21”
- This Splendid Place 14’17”
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Crossing The Trail, the CD is on sale for $12. These are the last few copies we have left on this CD.
MikeG at Ambient Music Guide wrote: “Crossing The Trail (1998) emphasises a tribal side to the richer sound first heard on River Of Appearance. It’s more in the environmental ambience mould, laden with delicate location sounds from nature and a myriad of slow percussive grooves that suggest mysterious ritual without resorting to any kind of overstatement… Crossing The Trail is a fine example of the tribal ambient form.”
Note: the CD is the original 1998 edition (no bonus track). They are on sale for $12. The 20th anniversary digital edition includes a bonus track, a 26-minute live recording from the 1997 Projektfest with guest Steve Roach.
1988 Bio (which under-emphasize the rhythmic / percussive aspect of the album):
For vidnaObmana, music is like water. It is a singular element with the unique ability to change form, flowing and changing, but never losing the qualities of movement and fluidity. It can be very lively and dramatic, but at the same time it can be very silent and cold. As a self-taught electronic musician, vidnaObmana explored different musical areas before discovering the techniques of looping and shaping harmonies, merging layers of sound and minimizing the configurations to a few notes. His style of atmospheric music creates trance-like states in listeners who understand the language of sound. Accepting the challenge to leap into unknown and uncharted terrain, vidnaObmana refines his minimalistic sound-sculpting and expands his range of rhythms on Crossing The Trail. Exhilarated by the experience of performing live, new soundworlds are explored in which a cross exchange of harmonics herald a musical landscape rich in tonal texture and exquisite detail. Just as water takes on new structure, so too does vidnaObmana. Whether taking form as rain, ocean, ice or snow, the constant element in vidnaObmana’s music is change.
Crossing the Trail features guest musicians Steve Roach and Jeff Pearce.
VidnaObmana: The Trilogy (3CD) (2018 limited edition reissue)
Chuck van Zyl: The Relic (Limited to 300 Copies) (2CD) (Warehouse Sale)
Steve Roach & vidnaObmana: Cavern of Sirens (CD)
Dirk Serries – The Origin Reversal (Digital)
vidnaObmana: the River of Appearance (2CD)
Reviews Editor –
From Electronic Music
Talk about sublime. This release from Vidna Obmana is drifting across distant alien landscapes in a big way. Letting you drift along too, but never letting you out of its sights.
Ambient music has come a very long way since the days when musicians had a few unruly oscillators and several tracks of magnetic tape to work with. This is the future after all, and with all the ultra stable sound generation hardware and digital audio processing software currently available it’s not surprising that music like this is sounding the way it was meant to. Getting closer to the way the composer hears it.
At times the long pensive cycles, which enter the picture from time to time, take on an urgency that shouldn’t be able to exist down at there at -120 bpm. And what’s with those spatial effects, created when various percussion sounds play around with some of the most unearthly sound effects and slumbering pads I’ve ever had the pleasure of being exposed to.
From Belgium then comes this masterpiece, created by Vidna Obmana with a contribution from Steve Roach, and one from Jeff Pierce. This is music channeled from another time and place through a medium that really knows what it’s doing. Rating – 901,847 (out of a possible 1,000,000)
Reviews Editor –
From Sonic Immersion
Fans of minimal soundscape tapestries will really want to dig this gem by Dirk Serries, better known as vidnaObmana. Crossing the Trail offers a continuous 70-minute farscape of ethereal sound washes, shakers and percussion, journeying through shaded and light territory with nice unfolding minimalism.
It’s a seamless blend of slow curling and delicately sculptured drones and more intense, complex harmonies with a tribal edge, featuring a fascinating interplay of percussion and beats. The outcome is a breathing and shape-shifting mass of rich soundings evoking sacred, hypnotizing as trance-inducing states. Strange beauty and wonder reign on this stunning, captivating ambient journey that embeds a strong visual and adventurous character.
If you like to experience vidna’s dynamic sound worlds parallel to my pure atmospheric outings, the expansive Crossing the Trail serves you the very best of both. -Bert Strolenberg
Reviews Editor –
From Ambient Music Guide
Crossing The Trail (1998) emphasises a tribal side to the richer sound first heard on River Of Appearance. It’s more in the environmental ambience mould, laden with delicate location sounds from nature and a myriad of slow percussive grooves that suggest mysterious ritual without resorting to any kind of overstatement. Composers like Roach and Rich may have got there first, but Crossing The Trail is a fine example of the tribal ambient form. -Mike G
Reviews Editor –
From Star’s End
Using synthesizers, electronics, outboard processing gear and an array of exotic instruments, Belgian electronic musician Vidna Obmana creates an extended musical journey through rhythms, soundworlds and sonic atmospheres. Crossing The Trail is dynamic, leading the listener to deep and peaceful sanctuaries of sound contrasted by intricate and energized pulse grooves. -Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END
Reviews Editor –
A review from All Music by John W. Patterson:
Belgian composer Dirk Serries, aka Vidna Obmana, has crafted a well-polished, smooth stone that glistens in the river of Sound. His minimalist, trancewalk, dreamtime whispers on Crossing the Trail rate right up there with Steve Roach, Robert Rich, and Nik Tyndall, to mention just a few. In fact, Roach guests on this release having collaborated with Vidna Obmana in past creations. Seamless, drifting, boundless, lilting, waves and rivulets of sound wash over you in the 69-plus minutes, that pass by in a timeless void. Seven journeys await you, each pouring into the next, “Encountering Terrain” to “Trail Dwelling” and into “Forest Arrow.” I hear a percussive, gently driven trilogy, flowing from the headwaters of imagination to the broad expanses of vision. “Mission Ground” glides you out onto a still lake of mists and ominous foreboding. “The Esoteric Source” is passage inside a great Temple, the Hall of Records, spanning this tributary of Time we know as Life. Vidna Obmana opens the ineffable gates of lucid dreaming with this piece. “The Giant Traveller” speaks to me of secrets now learned, we walk now in wisdom, unafraid of the darkness and the pace is our own. “This Splendid Place” is the dimension of all our aspirations, now complete. Pain is past. Sorrow is unknown. Quicksilver, ebony dark seas caress the shores of the Overworld. Here is the land of the undiscovered way, the paths few trod, the pass through the snow-covered mountains on the edge of Being. Vidna Obmana guides the soul in Crossing the Trail. Vidna Obmana has learned his lessons well and offers a gift of thanks.