Trollheart's Wonderful World of Prog

Trollheart · 06-30-2018, 06:11 PM

Since it's unlikely I'll ever get back to my History of Prog journal, and in a (probably vain) effort to kick some life into this sleeping subforum, I thought I'd try this.

I'll be listing and featuring all the prog rock and prog metal bands I can find on the alphabetical list held by ProgArchives.com - picking randomly from the list, so that one post might be about a well-known artist like Yes or Gong or Spock's Beard, and another might be about one that is new to everyone, or some artist who recorded one demo in 1971. I'll put as much information about them as I can and feature any music I can. Comment is as usual invited and encouraged.

I'll keep indices here for later perusal, assuming I don't get hit by a bus (probably driven by Batty) in the course of compiling this. In the end, hopefully, it may turn out to be a useful resource for those interested in, exploring or just getting into prog. If nothing else, it will keep the very few progheads here entertained, and maybe slightly raise the profile of this subforum, which currently is somewhat akin to this:

Coming up next:

INDEX OF ARTISTS

vidna Obmana
William Lyall

Trollheart · 06-30-2018, 06:12 PM

[reserved for index]

Trollheart · 06-30-2018, 06:12 PM

[reserved for index 2]

Trollheart · 06-30-2018, 06:12 PM

[reserved for index 3]

Mondo Bungle · 06-30-2018, 06:16 PM

Q'UQ'UMATZ discography and reviews

*waits evil-ly*

Trollheart · 06-30-2018, 06:17 PM

Artist: vidna Obmana
Am I familiar with this artist? No, not at all
Subgenre(s): Electronic/Dark Ambient/Drone
Nationality: Belgian
Lineup: Dirk Serries – everything
Active From: 1984
Active To: 2007 (after which he changed the name to Fear Falls Burning)
Albums: 25 solo, also 4 as Opera for Four Fusion Works, and a further 37 in collaboration with various other artists
Comparable to: Asmus Tietchens, Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Biosphere, Robert Rich, Robert Henke

The music of Belgian composer Dirk Serries, under the pseudonym vidna Obmana (a phrase which translates to “optical illusion”) has been described as “blissed out and dreamy textural drones, and space-age epic synthesised moves”, “anamorphic and organic” and “using the technique of looping and shaping the harmonies, minimising the configurations to a few notes.” Sounds right up the streets Frownland and Occulthawk might travel! That's some discography for someone who's been going just over thirty years. Wow. And I never heard of him before. He's composed music for movies too, and even the soundtrack for the Antwerp Zoo Aquarium. Let's take a listen to something he's done. What to choose? What's available? Let's try his first ever album, which is called The Ultimated (sic) Sign of Burning Death, released in 1985.

This is the only track I can find off it, called “Move”.

Yeah, that's some ambient drone, all right. Solar Fields, how are ya? Ooh! Unexpected explosion of percussion there and some kind of Black Metal vocals. Tres interessant! Can't say I'd personally be into it though. Let's try another one. This is from 1994, from an album he called The Spiritual Bonding, and this is the title track.

Kind of sounds like a didgeridoo there at the beginning, but all the credits say is “instruments”, so I don't know. Nice sort of spooky echoey thing coming in now as it fades out, around the three-minute mark (this runs for just over twelve) with slow percussion making its way through as well. Offhand, I like this better than the first example, so far anyway. Picking up a nice beat now, slow and sort of hypnotic, a little tribal in a slow, measured kind of way. Yeah that was really nice. I could listen to more of that.

But we must move on. This man has something in the region of sixty albums, and he's only the first post! So where do we go now? Didn't I mention that he wrote a soundtrack for an aquarium? Let's check that one out. It's called, ahem, Soundtrack for the Aquarium and was released in 2001.

This is the opening sequence, “Aqua 1 (Theme)” and you can hear either real whalesong or something synthesised to replicate it here, with some lovely ambient, atmospheric slow music that I could really see fitting in with the slow, majestic movement of certain fishes and of course whales, though I doubt the Antwerp Zoo has one of those. Maybe it does. Lovely stuff, just totally entrancing.

Honestly, I could stay here checking out this stuff all night, and you may very well want to. But I got to move on. We're going to check out one more album before we head, and I'm going to go for the last one he recorded under this project, which is called Opera for Four Fusion Works Series, Act 4: The Bowing Harmony and was, as it indicates, the fourth in a cycle, released in 2007.

Okay I can't get anything off that. The only one that comes up at all is the first album, so we'll go for that then.

The full title is Opera for Four Fusion Works, Act 1: Echoes of Steel and this, the only track I can find, is I guess the fourth movement, called simply “IV”.

Seems to be some lovely relaxing ambient music, but it runs for a total of seventeen minutes, so I'll just leave it here and you can listen to it, if you wish, at your leisure.

Final Conclusion: Definitely needs to be checked out more. Very wide and varied music, highly technical but with a lot of heart and emotion, and would definitely suit anyone into ambient or the softer side (mostly) of electronic music.

Result:

Trollheart · 06-30-2018, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mondo Bungle

Q'UQ'UMATZ discography and reviews

*waits evil-ly*

I'm certainly not above putting the random choice aside to check something out that someone thinks I should, and I've always been impressed by your music. However I should make it clear that I am concentrating on artists here, not albums, so will not be reviewing full albums. I may definitely take a hop, skip and a jump through any proggy work you have though. Is everything in that link eligible to be called prog, or which ones should I concentrate on?

Mondo Bungle · 06-30-2018, 06:26 PM

anyone will tell you it's as prog as it gets. I do recall you already reviewed one of the albums glowingly.

I dunno though, I guess you could check out Tepeu since that's what's made me my millions and all the women.

Mondo Bungle · 06-30-2018, 06:28 PM

in any case I was just being silly since I'm in the database

grindy · 06-30-2018, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mondo Bungle

anyone will tell you it's as prog as it gets. I do recall you already reviewed one of the albums glowingly.

I dunno though, I guess you could check out Tepeu since that's what's made me my millions and all the women.

Didn't he already check out Tepeu and kinda liked it but also left out the two longest tracks or something?

06-30-2018, 06:11 PM	#1 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	Trollheart's Wonderful World of Prog Since it's unlikely I'll ever get back to my History of Prog journal, and in a (probably vain) effort to kick some life into this sleeping subforum, I thought I'd try this. I'll be listing and featuring all the prog rock and prog metal bands I can find on the alphabetical list held by ProgArchives.com - picking randomly from the list, so that one post might be about a well-known artist like Yes or Gong or Spock's Beard, and another might be about one that is new to everyone, or some artist who recorded one demo in 1971. I'll put as much information about them as I can and feature any music I can. Comment is as usual invited and encouraged. I'll keep indices here for later perusal, assuming I don't get hit by a bus (probably driven by Batty) in the course of compiling this. In the end, hopefully, it may turn out to be a useful resource for those interested in, exploring or just getting into prog. If nothing else, it will keep the very few progheads here entertained, and maybe slightly raise the profile of this subforum, which currently is somewhat akin to this: Coming up next: *INDEX OF ARTISTS* vidna Obmana William Lyall __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018 Last edited by Trollheart; 07-04-2018 at 06:13 PM.

06-30-2018, 06:12 PM	#2 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	[reserved for index] __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

06-30-2018, 06:12 PM	#3 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	[reserved for index 2] __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

06-30-2018, 06:12 PM	#4 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	[reserved for index 3] __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

06-30-2018, 06:17 PM	#6 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	Artist: vidna Obmana Am I familiar with this artist? No, not at all Subgenre(s): Electronic/Dark Ambient/Drone Nationality: Belgian Lineup: Dirk Serries – everything Active From: 1984 Active To: 2007 (after which he changed the name to Fear Falls Burning) Albums: 25 solo, also 4 as Opera for Four Fusion Works, and a further 37 in collaboration with various other artists Comparable to: Asmus Tietchens, Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Biosphere, Robert Rich, Robert Henke The music of Belgian composer Dirk Serries, under the pseudonym vidna Obmana (a phrase which translates to “optical illusion”) has been described as “blissed out and dreamy textural drones, and space-age epic synthesised moves”, “anamorphic and organic” and “using the technique of looping and shaping the harmonies, minimising the configurations to a few notes.” Sounds right up the streets Frownland and Occulthawk might travel! That's some discography for someone who's been going just over thirty years. Wow. And I never heard of him before. He's composed music for movies too, and even the soundtrack for the Antwerp Zoo Aquarium. Let's take a listen to something he's done. What to choose? What's available? Let's try his first ever album, which is called The Ultimated (sic) Sign of Burning Death, released in 1985. This is the only track I can find off it, called “Move”. Yeah, that's some ambient drone, all right. Solar Fields, how are ya? Ooh! Unexpected explosion of percussion there and some kind of Black Metal vocals. Tres interessant! Can't say I'd personally be into it though. Let's try another one. This is from 1994, from an album he called The Spiritual Bonding, and this is the title track. Kind of sounds like a didgeridoo there at the beginning, but all the credits say is “instruments”, so I don't know. Nice sort of spooky echoey thing coming in now as it fades out, around the three-minute mark (this runs for just over twelve) with slow percussion making its way through as well. Offhand, I like this better than the first example, so far anyway. Picking up a nice beat now, slow and sort of hypnotic, a little tribal in a slow, measured kind of way. Yeah that was really nice. I could listen to more of that. But we must move on. This man has something in the region of sixty albums, and he's only the first post! So where do we go now? Didn't I mention that he wrote a soundtrack for an aquarium? Let's check that one out. It's called, ahem, Soundtrack for the Aquarium and was released in 2001. This is the opening sequence, “Aqua 1 (Theme)” and you can hear either real whalesong or something synthesised to replicate it here, with some lovely ambient, atmospheric slow music that I could really see fitting in with the slow, majestic movement of certain fishes and of course whales, though I doubt the Antwerp Zoo has one of those. Maybe it does. Lovely stuff, just totally entrancing. Honestly, I could stay here checking out this stuff all night, and you may very well want to. But I got to move on. We're going to check out one more album before we head, and I'm going to go for the last one he recorded under this project, which is called Opera for Four Fusion Works Series, Act 4: The Bowing Harmony and was, as it indicates, the fourth in a cycle, released in 2007. Okay I can't get anything off that. The only one that comes up at all is the first album, so we'll go for that then. The full title is Opera for Four Fusion Works, Act 1: Echoes of Steel and this, the only track I can find, is I guess the fourth movement, called simply “IV”. Seems to be some lovely relaxing ambient music, but it runs for a total of seventeen minutes, so I'll just leave it here and you can listen to it, if you wish, at your leisure. Final Conclusion: Definitely needs to be checked out more. Very wide and varied music, highly technical but with a lot of heart and emotion, and would definitely suit anyone into ambient or the softer side (mostly) of electronic music. Result: __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018