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 | Vidna Obmana: "Crossing the Trail" Pre-Release Interview (AmbiEntrance© - 1998) It's a great day when you receive a new Vidna Obmana recording! It's a better day when he agrees to answer your nosy questions... (concert photography by Ed in den Bosch) |
| Link: Most of us who "know" Vidna Obmana only know you through the resounding beauty of your music. What can you tell us about the person behind the sounds?
Vidna: Mmmm, well I'm a self-taught musician who came to be introduced with music on an active base around my 12th birthday. As a child, I always have been fascinated by film soundtracks and perhaps this led to my increasing curiosity in instrumental music. Since my parents bought me an analog Korg MS20, I started to experiment with a lot of sounds and styles. Limited to the more harsh and direct sounds of this analog instrument, I was not able to concentrate myself upon the music, I liked so much. Ambient music or electronic instrumental music in general had to do with subtle movements and harmonies and at that stage, I was just not experienced enough to learn and absorb the knowledge in creating my own atmospheric music. This led me through various styles, from noise to more pop-orientated, although never satisfying and rewarding. Until, in 1987 I purchased my first digital workstation with which I was able to create my own collection of sounds, more subtle and refined, announcing a new period of exploring and composing in which I'm still working. The pace, I'm so fond of to work in, was created over time when I matured as an human being and musician. Now, I much more enjoy the silence and serenity which fills my studio when recording a new album or preparing ideas for a new project. Not only can I enjoy the solitude which you have as artist working solo but also outside this place, I've been appreciating much more the calm environment which surrounds you at times. Walking through nature definitely helps me to focus and my relationship with my wife Martine has been evolving on the same level where you both realize there's more to tap from the simple and natural things in life. Somehow I do feel this philosophy is surely present in my music. Serenity, calm and minimalism are definitely keywords to make my music successful. Link: I'm interested in your "regular" job; You're an ambient musician in your "spare" time, and by day... what? Vidna: Well, my music is absolutely more an obsession than an hobby so each spot of time I have, I take to my advantage. Sometimes the strain of my daily job is too much to handle the intensity of being and working in the studio, but it's really hard to survive as an independent artist here in Belgium since the obligations and its social climate claims more than you can gain from your income as a musician. Since last year with the help of my wife Martine, I was able to sign up for a weekly shorter working schedule. Doing my daily job as a clerk, I feel confident about supporting my music this way without compromise. My freedom as a musician has been and always will be a very important part of my creativity and evolution. Link: Martine also has contributed the photography for Crossing the Trail (and a vocal chant in The esoteric source). What *is* the subject in the photos, some kind of pod? (Very apt, by the way... like your music... beautiful, organic yet hard to define) Vidna: Yes, my wife Martine has been exploring highly innovative compositional techniques in photography for quite a while and since a couple of years she's been making an increasing progress in style and refinement. I really admire her photography and not because she's my wife but just because I feel there's a mutual factor which I also strive for with my music. Like you said yourself, the photography is atmospheric and organic yet hard to define. When Steve Roach and I were recording Cavern of Sirens, we were introduced with the first batch of her Circles and Artifacts series and were immediately blown away by them. So we ended up using one of her photographs for Cavern of Sirens. Martine's photography is mostly black&white and since I was looking for a very strong and B&W image for Crossing the trail, I chose a few new photographs by her for the cover. Apart from my own photography, the new album demanded a strong visual and adventurous character and this exactly what Martine's art could supply. And I'm glad I did since I feel that cover and music blends nicely together as being part of one origin. Martine's musical involvement was rather spontaneous and not really planned. As I was recording Approaching the glaze for Hypnos' The Other World compilation CD between producing my new solo, I felt it could be nice to use a voice as an additional dramatic element. So Martine volunteered and the result became to be very satisfying. This way Martine got involved with contributing to Crossing the trail as well, being part of a series of instruments and sounds lined up. Link: You mentioned soundtracks... Have you done any film scores? Vidna: I do wish some day I'll get the chance to compose a soundtrack for a movie, theatre play or dance piece since I feel it actually can work together. Over the years, I've done one specific soundtrack to an experimental video in 1987 but in fact, the music is not really representative for what Vidna Obmana stands for today. Recently there have been a few initial propositions towards such projects but unfortunately none of those plans were executed. Let's hope I can participate one day. Link: How would you explain your music to someone who was completely unfamiliar with your work? Vidna: To somebody who doesn't know my music, I think I prefer to define it as atmospheric since it offers me artistically a wide range of possibilities and elements to draw from and it doesn't mislead the listener when it's classified under this term. Then again, it's really hard to avoid categorization among the existing genres' since everybody deals with it. Anyway, I do think whatever the title may be, I believe the listener will experience the music individually without holding on to a marketing term. Link: Who do you listen to? Vidna: I listen to a lot of genres, from classical to more pop-orientated music, and it really depends on my frame of mind what exactly appeals to me at a specific moment. In general, I've much appreciation for the music of Van Morrison, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Jeff Pearce, Alio Die and Steve Roach. Link: Who's listening to you? Can you describe a "typical" Vidna Obmana fan? Vidna: I don't think it's possible to point out how a typical listener of my music looks like or lives. Over the years I met all kind of people, between 16 and 60 years old, eccentric or classic looking, all sharing the same interest in this particular music. A beautiful example I had 5 years ago when I had a big interview on the National Radio in Belgium during a rather stereotypical show. But the interviewer did a great job and really asked very well-thought questions as introduction to my music since the average listener was used to listening to chanson or mellow pop music. However, the response on the show was overwhelming coming from everywhere, replying to the music as if they were looking for this kind of music but didn't know how to name it or where to get it. This proved to me that you can't label people who're interested in listening to this music and most of all that you can't assume that this is highly intellectual or underground music, only acceptable for a cultural-minded crowd. This is just music for everybody, who's willing to jump into a different world of sounds. Link: I understand this is not always the case when performing live. I hear the crowd at last year's Projekt Fest weren't necessarily too open-minded... how do you handle a "bad" audience? Vidna: True, performing this kind of music can be extremely difficult in cases where you've to appear on a festival. At the Projekt festival, the atmosphere of such a concert like mine or Steve's was hard to realize since you're dealing with a big crowd of which a lot came only for joining the trend and not specifically for the music. And if, like us, you're appearing at the end of the evening, our music can be too intense and difficult to send out. But overall, the positive response was definitely above my expectations since a lot of people were introduced to this music for the first time. Since we're operating in this genre, we perhaps take it for granted but I can imagine this world of music can be very confrontational if you're not willing to submit to it. I have fond memories of this concert since it brought me closer to the listeners who came all the way down from various states to witness the concert and this is for me the most important and precious part of performing live. Link: Geographically speaking, where do you think your listeners are? (More Europe, more U.S.?....) Vidna: You probably noticed yourself, but I've been appearing on more US labels and participating to US compilation CDs than on projects from this side of the globe. It's true that I feel there's much more appreciation coming from the US than from Europe. It more or less comes in waves as for instance, since last year I've been asked for several performances in The Netherlands. So perhaps the interest is increasing over here. But still the strongest feelings I get from the US. Link: You've got a very nice website (www.vidnaobmana.org). Are you personally involved much with the Internet? What's your favorite thing about your site? Vidna: Thanks. I'm not so involved with the Internet since I really don't have the time for it. I do take care of my correspondence over the Internet since it really helps the communication to proceed more smoothly. Definitely a big improvement from corresponding through the postal system and being in touch with other colleagues and of course, most important the listener is really essential. Luckily, I met Patrick, my webmaster, a couple of years ago since he was working on the Art for Ears site, a Belgian organization who focuses on Belgian electronic music, and due to his expertise on the Internet level, we're able to map a fine website for Vidna Obmana. it's thanks to Patrick's devotion, it became such a beautiful place to visit. Link: We're getting excited about the release of Crossing the Trail". How is it different from your previous recordings? Vidna: Well, Crossing the trail is indeed different from my previous solo The River of Appearance, although I still feel that both works are interconnected. As all of my albums contain a bit of truth and personal experience, The River of Appearance is definitely the sum of what I experienced in my personal life and how far I reached out musically over the past decade. The urge of returning to my intimate and very subtle and minimal approach was so overwhelming, it became a necessity to compose this album. Also the album was made possible by the expertise, I gained over the years, and this way I saw it as a fine opportunity to recapture this intimacy and serenity. As soon as the album was completed, I realized that this was periodically an ultimate experience in terms of creating these particular structures. The River of Appearance has made a change in my creativity possible and to strive for preserving the strength and personal importance of this album, I met the challenge to enter new terrain without losing grip on what my music stands for. As I also accepted a couple of offers to perform live again, this made aware of the dynamical soundworlds parallel to my pure atmospheric ones, which I've been exploring on previous albums. Working on the new solo album was the right moment to focus myself musically on the process of rhythms and more intense and complex harmonies without neglecting my techniques for creating these minimal and subtle electronic waves. Crossing the trail incorporated both approaches which made a new dimension affordable. Also this album has been my personal experience where an artist comes to that particular crossroad and is obliged to choose whether he steps back onto familiar working ground or that he jumps into the unknown. Luckily, I felt the moment was right to leap into uncharted terrain, taking along the experiences I was able gather over the past decade of music. And perhaps most listeners will maybe not see and hear the difference instantly, I'm sure over time the change will be clear. Link: You've done many collaborations (Steve Roach, Sam Rosenthal, Asmus Tietchens, Djen Ajakan Shean, etc.); do you prefer working with someone else or solo? Vidna: I do enjoy both, really. When working solo in the studio on an album, you have the freedom to create the music at your own pace and as you might notice on my solo albums, the style is slightly different since then I have the space and focus to work on my specific techniques of looping and composing in creating the music. Yet more intimate and serene, perhaps. What drives me to collaborate with other musicians is to gain that spontaneous and live interaction with your fellow colleague as well as the stimulation, supported by the two of us, to experiment and try different things, you normally would not go for when working solo. Of course, I'm speaking here of a situation where you're real time in the studio together as my projects with Steve Roach are. The music with Steve is a perfect example on how exciting and inspirational live communication can be if you're both on the same level artistically since that is of course an essential part of working together. Somehow a few of my collaborations in the past proved to be the opposite so I feel it's important to express how well Steve and I understand each other by speaking in sound and not to philosophy on these subjects too long. For instance, as our approach on both collaborative albums was drawn to this live situation, we used the live set-up primarily, we had in our recent series of concerts, for performing and recording our third collaboration Ascension of Shadows. This project, which we recorded in October last year, is definitely the most refined and intimate music session, I ever made with another musician. We were so focused when creating the music that we hardly used any overdubs. Instead, we created an impressive collection of music real time on 2-track as if we were performing on stage. So therapeutic that we decided to name it our Meditation for the Millennium. My collaboration with the German electro-acoustic composer Asmus Tietchens is as much intense as my work with Steve, but situates itself on an entirely different level. Here we operate by exchanging source material but instead of just performing with overdubs, we allow each other to recycle the sources. Link: Do you have a personal "favorite" release, and why? Vidna: Tough question, Link, but I guess I feel pretty comfortable with my first album Revealed by composed nature and definitely my work together with Steve Roach with especially a reference to our third collaboration we did last year and which should be out in August this year on Projekt. But I guess each album has its strength and highlight. Crossing the trail is another album which I like to mention since it covers a moment in my life as a musician where the artistic decisions were seriously demanding and adventurous. I also feel that my previous solo album The River of Appearance has a very strong character since it returns to the extensive use of loops which has made my first album so successful. Link: Your music seems very loose, flowing, unstructured... is that the case when you're composing? Or are you following some blueprint? Vidna: I'm sure my arrangements are nowhere near to the classical methods of composing since the combination of notes, I'm working with, are complex and quite unlogical in classical terms. It's the multi-layering of voices that makes these harmonies somehow different. Important is preparing an album, writing down the global structure and determining which direction I need to go with this work. You know that my continuing process is one of always returning to the use of my loopings, whether acoustic or electronic, and that is basically the inspiration to each piece of new music. With each album I try to explore a certain aspect of this technique in order to keep the continuity between all albums flowing. Almost like a series of sequels but each time accentuating a particular idea which is diverse from the previous one. I do like to build up my repertoire as a composer and musician carefully by stripping down specific ideas to the core instead of blending all inspiration into one album. I feel that this really makes the identity as musician grow and mature in a certain way which is only known to yourself. Carving out that particular sound becomes your signature. On The River of Appearance I definitely use the technique of looping quite extensively. Completely situated around the use of minimal harmonies and repetitive combinations, it's a technique I already explored on my 1990 album Revealed by composed nature. The beauty of it is that you're able to return to a specific idea and expand this concept with the current knowledge. One of my favorite songs on River, Streamers of Stillness, uses this technique to its full effect, yet here similar to the Canon method. For this track, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve. The piano track was played live into the sequencer, which was set to a specific time loop. I have to admit that I used Q base quite often for this album in function of having a practical tape-recorder at hand. Beside the copying function, to create that specific continuation of loops in different rates and at various points, I'm not so in favor of using this sequencer. I do like to maintain the freedom of playing and creating music spontaneously where sometimes things happen by accident and prove to be incredible to use. The piano track supplies the necessary space to improvise and layer the other sounds against it. The layering happens real time against the sequence to shape the composition more playfully. The use of particular acoustic elements induces that feeling too. It's my favorite since I even discover each time a different layer upon listening. Also the piano loop also changes constantly, not really dramatically but very serene and essential. Recording it down onto a DAT and carving the sound out with various effect-processors is another task to attend to since it's perhaps as much as important as structuring the basic idea of the song. Whether it's designing the sound at the end of completing the track or making new sounds, I feel it's a very essential part of creating your music. I don't work with any of the factory settings of any of my instruments and do take great joy in designing particular sounds which are related to one and another in timbre and dynamics. Beside the use of those loopings, programming sounds is quite fundamental in my music. Both Korg Workstations have been an incredible help in making this come true. As I like to conduct the musical process carefully, I also make sure that each song is related to the next one when recording a new album. This has been the case for all my albums. The one perhaps more strongly than the other but I still prefer to use this concept in my upcoming albums as well. Over the years it has became my trademark, for the pro and contras. It somehow demands more to listen to a song in which the sound is being carved out meticulously. One of the reasons perhaps I sometimes have difficulties to find a proper atmosphere when working on a song for a compilation CD. In such occasion you need to score the song into a timeframe of a couple of minutes and be able to present your music as an identity. My preference goes towards the recording of an entire album where the complete story is being told. Link: Can you share any of the "secret" sound sources you've used in Crossing the Trail? For instance, in Encountering terrain and others, I keep thinking I'm hearing tiny splashes of water, but can't be sure... Vidna: Well, Link, this is absolutely nice of you to mention the presence of these sounds since I feel it really makes the album so special for me personally. I took a great deal of time and energy to record this collection of sounds, I could use over the course of working on the album. And more or less it's an extension of the method I used for The River of Appearance where I processed several rainstick and seapod performances with speed variations, volume changes and EQ-ing. For the new album, I took this into detail and started to carve out these water-like constructions carefully by adding harmonizing and different effects. What really fascinated me when performing those acoustics real time against the basic structure of each song, it took on its own life and that I somehow managed to shift constantly from looping the sources in sync with the percussion or sometimes a-rhythmical against the basic structure. For me, these have been as much as important than the strong rhythmic aspect of the album. Link: Some of your songs, like Trail dwelling, are quite rhythmic; Are your drum rhythms "patterned" after some existing tribal beat, or are you just free flowing? Vidna: I guess I'm using a bit of both in realizing the human feel rhythm, I have in mind. It's clear that for instance on Encountering terrain I kept the rhythm strictly under control and played more with the movement around the beat. This way you more or less ripped out the steady metronome by placing pauses and opposite performances onto the rhythm. Yes, Trail Dwelling has a more flowing rhythm and is again another beautiful example how in tune Steve Roach's and my approach in working with sound are. Different from our full-length collaborations, I asked Steve to supply a rhythm for me to work with. As he delivered this fine rhythm on multi-track, I was able to sculpture the rhythm to the idea I had, again using different processing techniques. Link: I notice the track titles refer to the outdoors in reflection of your love for nature. Are your songs named before, during or after the composing process? Vidna: True, the reference in my titles to my affection for nature is strongly present as it's the case with my decision when using the artwork for a particular album. It's probably nature's purity which attracts me so, gaining strength and spirit from being in open air for a couple of hours is what I've been appreciating more and more lately. I mostly come up with an album title before I actually start to work in the studio on music. I don't write anything down onto paper but I mostly am preparing the structure of the album in my mind. This is when I frequently come up with the album's title as well. The song titles usually follow in the process of recording the work. Link: I'm also reviewing The Other World to which you contributed Approaching the Glaze. What can you tell us about this track? Was it one of those "difficult" compilation pieces? Vidna: As I explained before, Approaching the glaze was a piece I recorded in the middle of working on Crossing the trail and initiated the moment where I started to re-incorporate vocals. In fact, this piece has been a nice get-away for me personally from these intense recording sessions for the album. Here I could regain focus on the album by working on a purely atmospheric and calm piece. I feel it still captures a bit of the intensity of Crossing the trail in the first part of the track, but mostly it maintains the calmness and intimacy I always like to return to with my music. Link: What advice can you offer to someone who may be interested in creating their own ambient/electronic sounds? Vidna: Well, the only thing I could really share with those who're interested in creating their own music is that they should follow their own heart and try to achieve what they do think is satisfying. I think persistence in your own search for establishing the sound you're aiming for is perhaps the most demanding but as well the most rewarding in the long run. Link: Where might future recordings take you and your listeners? Vidna: Crossing the trail has been just released so that should have time and space to develop among the listeners but meanwhile projects are being planned and worked on. Completely finished but currently talking on how we want to visualize the release is my third collaboration with Steve Roach. Ascension of Shadows is really a big epic which took us into the studio last October here in Belgium and where we almost recorded all music live directly on DAT. This is our very personal statement towards the end of the century. It should hit the surface in August on Projekt. Meanwhile I'm working on a full-length album with Jeff Pearce which is called True Stories and will take us again to a more intimate and beautiful place. The album's completion is near and we're currently negotiating a release for 1999. Aside from this current project, I'm working on another full-length collaboration with the Italian Alio Die and an electronic/ethnic fusion with another Belgian and extremely talented multi-instrumentalist. Also contributed a couple of new pieces for international samplers and composed a source as guest musician for a new CD project, conducted by Chris&Cosey. And last but not least I hopefully will make a re-appearance with some concerts in the States this year and a confirmed performance at the E-Live festival (formerly Klem) in The Netherlands. Also, I'm currently working together with Chuck Van Zyl (radiohost of Star's End in Philadelphia) on a Vidna Obmana tour in October 98 which will take me to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Connecticut and maybe New York. I'll keep you posted. |
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Link: I want to close by saying Thank You! I admire your work and appreciate your taking time to speak with us. Please keep in touch.
Vidna: Thank you, Link. |  |
| If you haven't already, it's time to check out the official Vidna Obmana website. Crossing the Trail is released by, and available from, Projekt Records. Visit their site to explore the other varied artists in their roster, including Steve Roach & Roger King's westward collaboration, Dust to Dust. Special thanks to Sam Rosenthal, Lisa Feuer, Patrick Ceuppens and especially, Vidna Obmana. |
This interview posted April 7, 1998
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