Product Description
2 The shadow is slow, the hour is fleeting
3 The sun from the point of view of the earth
Purchase in Europe for fast, inexpensive shipping: Information in English here. Click to order CD. |
Limited edition of 500
John W Patterson of eer-music.com & ambientmusic-radio.com writes: I’ve listened several times to The chapters of the eclipse — and can quickly and assuredly recommend this as one of the finest ambient releases I have experienced in several years!! It is free of beats and percussive elements. It’s pure flowing soundscapes and is deeply relaxing. Bravo Die and Serries!!
The chapters of the eclipse reveals layers of eternity in each phase like a moon bath vitalizing luminous patches in expanded and contemplative dronescapes. The meditative and minimalist electronic ambient sky is suspended at the interval for liberation from the shadows of becoming: life in its most essential orientation.
The chapters of the eclipse is the new musical union of Italy’s Alio Die (Stefano Musso) and Belgium’s Dirk Serries (vidnaObmana) which, more than twenty years after their previous collaboration (Echo Passage, Projekt 1999), contains three compositions in a suspended airy, majestic succession. These liquid soundscapes create an elegy of pure sonic beauty.
“It offers no possibility of interpretation,” writes Musso, “because the involvement is complete, and immersion presupposes nothing more than being immediately part of the floating of the cosmos in the glow of its impersonal nature. Eight years in the making, this new creation radiates the wave that accompanies the explored space; it’s a telescope on eternity in a contemplative offering which is an impulse towards the very essence of the inner light.”
The chapters of the eclipse imparts passage to a realm of transcendence, a reflection on life while absorbing the beautiful harmonics of these essential dronescapes originating from electric guitar, zither and processing.
BIO
Alio Die is Stefano Musso’s shimmering, expansive dronescaping solo-project. Creating under the moniker since 1989, Musso released over 70 albums including fruitful collaborations with artists such as Robert Rich, Vidna Obmana, and Amelia Cuni. His personal musical signature is a hybrid between sonorous soundscapes and acoustic mysticism: a shadowy, cavernous, intensely detailed fusion of acoustical elements, sample treatments, sparse, echoing percussion, and deep, atmospheric sound design.
Dirk Serries is an experimentalist and foremost guitarist active since 1984, known for his vidnaObmana project and now extremely prolific in the free improvisation/free jazz scene with his own label and many different collaborations. The comings and goings of the sounds embrace and involve rather than describe; it develops sensations which we no longer hold back, while the sound textures flow continuously in the sensitive moments.
Reviews Editor –
From Audion #71
In my mind this release should really be credited to Alio Die & Vidna Obmana as crediting a release to an alias and a real name, when the latter’s own alias is what’s best-known for this sort of music, is a bit of a nonsense. So, here we have Italian ambient music artist Stefano Musso working with Belgian former industrial, turned ambient, turned tribal and multidisciplinary artist Dirk Serries. The album’s three big tracks feature Alio Die on psaltery, zither, drone, loops, and Dirk Serries on electric guitar and effects. The given instrumentation is surprisingly devoid of synthesizers, although its slowly recycling loops and waves of sound feel quite electronic. As such, it’s a lot more “new age” in feel than most work either has done before, which is down to the psaltery and zither giving it a vaguely Laraaji and Aeoliah like feel, but without the dynamics of the former or lushness of the latter. In fact, it’s almost devoid of any real melody, with Dirk’s guitar in almost endless vaguely Frippian or Michael Brook extended tone and looping mode.
I suppose all that’s left to say, is if you want a very gentle hour of soft and undemanding music, then The chapters of the eclipse is a very pleasant way to fill that hour. -Alan Freeman
Reviews Editor –
From Synth & Sequences
One of the most beautiful albums of ambient music, all genres included
A distant rumble pierces the wall of my eardrums as soon as “Without the light of the sky, time is lost” makes its first meditative vibrations heard. Guitar chords seem to drag in the background while a synth/guitar combination weaves slow undulations whose arabesques melt in the horizon like the sighs, the brushings of a hand caressing our cheek. These waves sigh, cry and/or whisper these secret incantations which have this power to make us fall into the oblivion. The strength of this title, if not of the album! These sound arcs take the same shapes, adjusting their tonalities in order to vary the elegiac range of their transcendental murmurs on our subconscious. Every second of this track is invested with it. One cannot ignore this fragile sweetness whose wordless poetry becomes the ally of our torments as well as of these visions of a past where happiness seemed so evanescent. Everything is there! We only have to let ourselves be cradled by these great mirific wings, a bit like Frodo and Sam when they were extirpated from the scarlet lava to land towards the paradisiacal skies. This is the vision that comes to my mind while listening to this magnificent minimalist esoteric oration that is “Without the light of the sky, time is lost.” This very long track of The Chapters of the eclipse, what an appropriate title that literally sticks to its 61 minutes, flows its almost 24 minutes in an ethereal vision that flirts with the sonic ashes of the superb album Structures from Silence, especially “Reflections in Suspension.” Not for nothing has this magnificent album made its way into my iPod night music section!
Have I ever heard a softer, more musical and more striking meditative ambient music than this? Yes, with the music of Steve Roach! And yet it is not Roach that my ears have heard from this beautiful “Without the light of the sky, time is lost.” It’s the divine music of Alio Die and Dirk Serries, also known as Vidna Obmana, who form a more than seraphic duo for the purposes of this beautiful album that comes to us from Projekt Records. Composed and recorded between 2014 and 2022 in the studios of the two musicians in Italy and Belgium The Chapters of the eclipse proposes 3 long and very meditative movements built on the same bases, that is to say, multilayered sound arcs that are melting in the diverse tints of a musical horizon. If we take “The shadow is slow, the hour is fleeting,” the decor is darker with sometimes raucous hums that give a texture of Dark Ambient music to the vibes. The arabesques still have this texture of synth and guitar crying, like suffering here, in a darker musical panorama. The guitar is heard moaning more in “The sun from the point of view of the earth.” The subtle buzzes active in the background simulate a slow procession that invites us to a deeper introspection. Alio Die and Dirk Serries couldn’t find a better way to conclude an album of such magnitude. Hats off to them, gentlemen! The Chapters of the eclipse invites itself in the category of the most beautiful albums of ambient music, all genres included. Yes, a superb album! -Sylvain Lupari August 29th, 2022 Rating: 5 out of 5
Reviews Editor –
From Ver Sacrum
Alio Die and Dirk Serries return to join forces 22 years after Echo Passage (Projekt 1999). This new work is titled The chapters of the eclipse. In the meantime, the Vidna Obmana theme song has been shelved by Dirk Serries but, not for this reason, the Belgian musician has stopped his musical activity as the most attentive listeners surely know. His music today sounds very minimal and his research has continued with projects such as Fear Falls Burning (closed in 2012) and Microphonics as well as with albums to his name. Alio Die, on the other hand, seems to be constantly touched by the sacred fire of inspiration and I must say that, in a sea of times inflated like that of ambient music, its production remains a guarantee.
In The chapters of the eclipse, almost as if by magic, we find the ethereal and subliminal atmospheres of the first Vidna Obmana, that of epochal records such as Shadowing In Sorrow and Ending Mirage that join the typical soundscapes of Alio Die. The work is divided into 3 long compositions characterized by a calm, liquid sound and an unreal beauty. The 24 minutes of the opening “Without the Light of the Sky, Time Is Lost” are meditative music that makes us travel in the Cosmos, abandoning space-time coordinates. “The Shadow Is Slow, the Hour Is Fleeting” shines with a magnetic aura while the concluding “The Sun from the Point of View of the Earth” takes us to wander through abstract and colorful landscapes. A record that should not be missing in the collection of the followers of ambient music. -Di Ceasar
Reviews Editor –
From Mirko Ruckels
Blissful and gentle, it took all of a minute for me to understand the mastery going on here. When two artists of this calibre can work together, you know that there is something very rare and empathic going on. The music is effortless and only partially tethered to sound, as it transcends into other mediums, like light and air and space by virtue of what it relinquishes. This is music from a dream, from two souls who understand and know dreaming and can take us there so we can look together. Favorite track: Without the light of the sky, time is lost.
Reviews Editor –
From Debaser
Alio Die and Dirk Serries return to join forces 22 years after Echo Passage (Projekt 1999). This new work is titled The chapters of the eclipse. In the meantime, the Vidna Obmana theme song has been shelved by Dirk Serries but, not for this reason, the Belgian musician has stopped his musical activity as the most attentive listeners surely know. His music today sounds very minimal and his research has continued with projects such as Fear Falls Burning (closed in 2012) and Microphonicsas well as with albums in his name. Alio Die, on the other hand, seems to be constantly touched by the sacred fire of inspiration and I must say that, in a sea of times inflated like that of ambient music, his production remains a guarantee.
In The chapters of the eclipse, almost as if by magic, we find the ethereal and subliminal atmospheres of the first Vidna Obmana, that of epochal records such as Shadowing In Sorrow and Ending Mirage that join the typical soundscapes of Alio Die. The work is divided into 3 long compositions characterized by a calm, liquid sound and an unreal beauty. The 24 minutes of the opening “Without the Light of the Sky, Time Is Lost” are meditative music that makes us travel in the Cosmos, abandoning space-time coordinates. “The Shadow Is Slow, the Hour Is Fleeting” shines with a magnetic aura while the concluding “The Sun from the Point of View of the Earth” takes us to wander through abstract and colorful landscapes. A record that should not be missing in the collection of the followers of ambient music. -Cervovolante
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
A combination one can’t go wrong with: Alio Die and Dirk Serries. Dirk Serries is a Belgian composer and sound-sculptor we know best from his days when he was releasing albums under the alias VidnaObmana, many a classic like The River of Appearance, Crossing the Trail, and Twilight of Perception, just to name a few. He’s also released many collaborations with the likes of Steve Roach, Asmus Tietchens, Jeff Pearce. Brannan Lane, David Lee Myers, and many others. His previous collaboration with Alio Die, Echo Passage, is a classic of late-90s floating ambient electronics. Alio Die (alias of Italian composer Stefano Musso) likewise has a long history of releasing music, beginning around 1990, with around eighty releases to his credit, including collaborations with Robert Rich, Lorenzo Montanà;, Matthias Grassow, Zeit, Sylvi Alli, Amelia Cuni and others.
The Chapters of The Eclipse presents a collection of three long-form shimmering dronescapes, a full eight years in the making, imbued with cosmic beauty and majestic radiation, reaching out into space and at the same time finding inward paths of light and shadows, logging a meditative journey in which the listener can reach full contemplative immersion.
The opening track, “Without the Light of the Sky, Time Is Lost,” presents a sprawling 24-minute transcendental drift through beautiful layered scintillating sounds based on a soft, spiraling four chord repeating sequence that dances like light from the aurora borealis; each repetition finds alternate layerings of glorious cosmic color, breathing in and out as the journey proceeds. “The Shadow Is Slow, the Hour Is Fleeting” drifts freely through a mesmerizing sonic wilderness, fusing darker colorations into far reaching textures cut from a similar cloth as the opener. “The Sun from the Point of View of the Earth” closes the set with another sidelong piece based on a soft, floating three chord sequence dueling with cosmic drifts of beautiful tonal color, often hidden behind darker shadows as the piece ascends to its conclusion.
The Chapters of The Eclipse is a must-have for aficionados of floating ambient sounds — it doesn’t get much better than this. -Peter Thelen