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Behind slow, serpentine guitar noodlings, Vidna Obmana's electronics shimmer mysteriously; When a Dead Tree Sings sounds as if someone is casually plucking within a radiant, somewhat eerie fogbank, where the echoing riffs of ghost-guitars are sometimes heard. A period of silence precedes the Evening Prophecy. As sparse, though drawn-out, chords dissipate into a coldly dusky sky, this piece is rather reminiscent of Slim Westerns, but darker, and absolutely lovely as such.
The Plain Truth is that when processed guitar sounds slipstream through a somewhat foreboding electronic haze such as this, the result is both abstract and beautiful, while tinged with a distinct edginess.
Devadder's exploratory plinky-plinking winds its way, seeking beyond the Perceptual Edge of VO's peacefully rolling sound-drifts, which wash like oddly illuminated mists rising from an irradiated ocean. The sounds beneath A Stinging Memory of Shared Skin (14:43) aren't as painful as that intriguing title may indicate; "wistful" perhaps would be a more apt descriptor of the mood evoked by the drifting ephemera, laced through with resonant strands of smoothly streaming feedback tones.
Yet another discomforting title, As Pain is Cloaked with a Smile (3:14) is a more active "duet" between Devadder's almost-Oriental string patterns and VO's countering synthforms.
Cinematic qualities infuse Deceiving Mirror in an Obscure Room with a strong sense of some impending unknowable; between swirls of electronics, guitar shards are heard and intriguing transformations keep the listener guessing in this moodily anticipatory offering. A long quiet spell is slowly intruded upon by approaching fogbanks in Leaving this Place Again. The piece develops into shapeless mists which pile and roll hypnotically in a soft chaos, without any "recognizable" guitar sounds.
All this talk of contemporariness is reflected in VO's recently revamped website, entitled "The Contemporary Harmonic"; there you can learn more about upcoming projects that define this new focus, as well as offer much more insight into past projects, etc.
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